News

ITT19: Improving public safety and tackling crime using maths
14 February 2024

Partners Wessex Water and CameraForensics joined us for ITT19 which took place at the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution (BRLSI) from 29 Jan to 2 Feb 2024.

Improving public safety and tackling crime using maths. ITT19: 29 Jan-2 Feb 2024

SAMBa’s 19th Integrative Think Tank was delivered in partnership with Wessex Water, a water and sewerage company providing essential services to 2.9 million customers across the south west of England, and CameraForensics who provide digital imaging forensics for global law enforcement agencies. The ITT model brings participants from across SAMBa together with external partners to reformulate large challenges into mathematical questions that will lead to collaborative research projects.

During the first two days, groups considered potential mathematical questions and approaches to a range of challenges presented by the partners. For the remainder of the week, the participants worked in teams, each exploring a particular approach to one of the challenges. The ITT was brought to a close with students presenting the work done by their team during the week and making recommendations for potential future research directions.

The ITT was an excellently well run, planned and managed event. We presented real-world challenges relating to understanding the impacts our water recycling centres and storm overflows have upon river recreational users. It was amazing to witness the breath of talent from the PhD students and academic staff as they picked apart the mathematical and statistical fundamentals underlying the fate and transport of bacteria in our regions rivers. By the end of the week, we had projects formulated to address these challenges and advice on how we should monitor bacteria in the future.

 

John Bagnall, Principal Environmental Scientist, Wessex Water

Problem reformulation

From Tuesday afternoon onwards, small teams of PhD students, staff and partners worked on challenges in the following areas:

Wessex Water

  • Estimating concentration of bacteria
  • Bayesian network for forecasting and source apportionment
  • Insights from dynamical physics-based models of contaminant transport in river flow

CameraForensics

  • Geolocation
  • Stable Diffusion Inpainting – Analysing Image Authenticity
  • Extracting signal noise pattern
  • Efficient fingerprint matching in a lower dimension

Future research collaborations

Following the ITT, students compose technical reports which describe the potential of the research opportunities. ITT projects can lead to collaborative research for our SAMBa cohort, via PhD topics, or as smaller group projects. Through working with partners at SAMBa ITT’s, we have built deep and long-term relationships.

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