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An intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curve describes the relationship between rainfall intensity and duration for a given return period and location. Such curves are obtained through frequency analysis of rainfall data and commonly used in infrastructure design, flood protection, water management, and urban drainage systems. However, they are typically available only in sparse locations. Data for other sites must be interpolated as the need arises. This paper describes how extreme precipitation of several durations can be interpolated to compute IDF curves on a large, sparse domain. In the absence of local data, a reconstruction of the historical meteorology is used as a covariate for interpolating extreme precipitation characteristics. This covariate is included in a hierarchical Bayesian spatial model for extreme precipitations. This model is especially well suited for a covariate gridded structure, thereby enabling fast and precise computations. As an illustration, the methodology is used to construct IDF curves over Eastern Canada. An extensive cross-validation study shows that at locations where data are available, the proposed method generally improves on the current practice of Environment and Climate Change Canada which relies on a moment-based fit of the Gumbel extreme-value distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martin Bradbury Wilk was born on December 18, 1922, in Montréal, Québec, Canada. He completed a B.Eng. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1945 at McGill University and worked as a Research Engineer on the Atomic Energy Project for the National Research Council of Canada from 1945 to 1950. He then went to Iowa State College, where he completed a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree in Statistics in 1953 and 1955, respectively. After a one-year post-doc with John Tukey, he became Assistant Director of the Statistical Techniques Research Group at Princeton University in 1956-1957, and then served as Professor and Director of Research in Statistics at Rutgers University from 1959 to 1963. In parallel, he also had a 14-year career at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey. From 1956 to 1969, he was in turn Member of Technical Staff, Head of the Statistical Models and Methods Research Department, and Statistical Director in Management Sciences Research. He wrote a number of influential papers in statistical methodology during that period, notably testing procedures for normality (the Shapiro-Wilk statistic) and probability plotting techniques for multivariate data. In 1970, Martin moved into higher management levels of the American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) Company. He occupied various positions culminating as Assistant Vice-President and Director of Corporate Planning. In 1980, he returned to Canada and became the first professional statistician to serve as Chief Statistician. His accomplishments at Statistics Canada were numerous and contributed to a resurgence of the institution's international standing. He played a crucial role in the reinstatement of the Cabinet-cancelled 1986 Census. He remained active after his retirement, serving as a Senior Advisor to the Privy Council Office as well as on several national commissions. In addition, he chaired the Canadian National Task Forces on Tourism Data and on Health Information. Martin is a former President of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) and Vice-President of the American Statistical Association (ASA). He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and an honorary member of the SSC. He has received many honors, including the George Snedecor Prize, the Jack Youden Prize, the F.G. Brander Memorial Award, the SSC Gold Medal, and a Distinguished Alumni Achievement Citation from Iowa State University. He is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the American Statistical Association, the Royal Statistical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the New York Academy of Science. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1999 for his "insightful guidance on important matters related to our country's national statistical system." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1858 to 1860, the English naturalist and social activist Philip P. Carpenter toured North America. In April of 1859 he visited Montréal, Canada. Shocked by the sanitary conditions of the city, he wrote a paper that used statistical arguments to call for health reforms. Six years later he settled in Montréal and quickly became an active promoter of this cause. He began accumulating additional numerical evidence in support of his views. In the aftermath of a cholera scare in 1866, Carpenter became the driving force behind the creation of the Montreal Sanitary Association. That same year he published a second, more detailed article that took advantage of the 1861 census data to analyze mortality rates in Montréal. He made further statistical investigations in 1869. Unfortunately, Carpenter did not understand some of the subtleties associated with the analysis of vital statistics. An obscure bookkeeper, Andrew A. Watt, made a scathing public attack on both Carpenter's data and his interpretation thereof. In a series of newspaper articles, Watt scrutinized systematically all of Carpenter's writings, showing his faults and correcting them wherever he could. Although Watt's arguments were correct, the public was slow to understand them. The controversy continued through 1870. When the nature of Watt's criticisms finally became better understood and Carpenter persisted with statistical arguments, the latter lost credibility and was abandoned by his own association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cette étude comparative de la productivité et des habitudes de publication des chercheurs en probabilités et en statistique compléte le rapport déjá paru dans La revue á la fin de 1997. Pour réaliser ce travail, dix-huit revues internationales, neuf de chaque domaine, ont été recensées sur une période de dix ans. Un décompte des articles publiés dans ces revues, de leur longueur et du nombre de leurs auteurs, permet d'évaluer sommairement la productivité des établissements et des pays ayant le plus contribée á la recherche fondamentale dans ces deux disciplines entre 1986 et 1995. Ces données font aussi ressortir d'importantes différences culturelles dans les pratiques de publication des probabilistes et des statisticiens, notamment en ce qui touche le volume des écrits, leur longueur et le nombre de leurs signataires. Enfin, Particle met en lumiére l'importance de la contribution canadienne á l'essor de ces deux disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seize revues intemationales spécialisées en statistique fondamentale ont été recensées sur une période de 11 ans débutant en 1985. Un décompte des articles publiés dans ces revues, de leur longueur et du nombre de leurs auteurs, permet d'évaluer sommairement la productivité des établissements et des pays ayant contributé à la recherche fondamentale en statistique durant cette période. Ces données mettent en évidence I'importance de la contribution du Canada au développement de la discipline au cours de la demière décennie. Elles brossent également un portrait de I'évolution des pratiques de publication, notamment en ce qui touche le volume des écrits, leur longueur et le nombre de leurs signataires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]