Dr Tom Fricker
Associate Research Fellow
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Extension: 5910
Telephone: 01392 725910
Profile:
Computer models are used routinely in nearly all areas of science to simulate physical systems. My research is about using statistics to understand what can be learned about about the real world from these simulations. I aim to improve the way in which uncertainty about the results of computer experiments is quantified and articulated.
I am particularly interested in climate models and I currently work on the NERC funded project End-to-End Quantification of Uncertainty for Impacts Predictions (EQUIP, www.equip.leeds.ac.uk). My current research focusses on developing statistical tools for assessing the quality of climate prediction systems. I am also interested in using Gaussian processes to build statistical surrogate models (otherwise known as meta-models or emulators) for complex computer models. These tools are designed to enable scientists to explore their models at a fraction of the cost of a conventional Monte Carlo simulation. I have worked on a range of application areas including climate science and mechanical engineering
Publications:
Published
Fricker, T.E., Oakley, J.E., and Sims, N. D. (2011). Probabilistic uncertainty analysis of an FRF of a structure using a Gaussian process emulator, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, in press. http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/43225/
Collins, M., Fricker, T.E. and Hermanson, L. (2011). From observations to forecasts – Part 9: what is decadal forecasting?, Weather, 66: 160–164.
Urban, N.M., and Fricker, T.E., (2010). A comparison of Latin hypercube and grid ensemble designs for the multivariate emulation of a climate model, Computers & Geosciences 36: 746-755.
Under review
Fricker, T.E., Oakley, J.E. and Urban N. M. (2011). Multivariate emulators with nonseparable covariance structures, invited resubmission to Technometrics.
Ferro, C.A.T. and Fricker, T.E. (2011). An unbiased decomposition of the Brier score, submitted to Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
