Statistics for Innovation

The world produces an enormous quantity of data. Every day, science, technology, industry and the civil society collect data with the purpose to explain phenomena and predict future events, in order to make the best decisions today. Statistics for Innovation has developed new statistical methods and computational tools to learn from data, quantify risk and help make decisions in uncertain situations in the sectors petroleum, marine resources, health and finance. Today, on the basis of eight years of research, the partners of (sfi)2 operate innovatively in their core businesses: - The Institute of Marine Research makes more precise estimates of fish abundance for cod and other species in the Barents Sea, leading to quotas that strengthen a sustainable industry. - DNB quantifies their global aggregated risks in a more reliable and precise way, allowing to protect themselves against co-occurrence of multiple financial losses. - Gjensidige has new tools to infer on the risk that individual policyholders represent, which allows performing better pricing of their policies. Also, the potential effect of climate change on insurance against weather related damages to buildings has been quantified. - The Oslo University Hospital, together with UiO, has patented a gene signature that allows predicting the effect of postmastectomy radiotherapy (PMRT) in breast cancer. Furthermore, open-access computational tools are made internationally available to perform advanced genomic investigations, leading to the understanding of disease. - PubGene implemented new features to their bio-medical search engine Coremine that exploits intelligent text mining and allows target topical searches. - Smerud Medical Research develops competence to integrate clinical trials in innovative ways. - Statoil models oil and gas reservoirs using tools which incorporate more data and more geophysical understanding and new tools to design optimal exploration plans are developed. This contributes to increase the success rate for new findings and to improve field exploitation. - Hydro predicts electricity prices with reliable levels of uncertainty and higher precision, short term and long term analyses, for a pan-European electricity market, where renewable energies play important roles. This innovation contributes to very significant value creation for our partners and for the Norwegian economy at large.

Statistical science is the fundamental tool for collection, analysis, computation and interpretation of data. It enables discovery in science, technology, industry and services. Statistics for Innovation will make modern statistics a tool for innovation f or Norwegian enterprises focusing on petroleum, finance, marine and health. This matches the current priorities of the Norwegian Parliament and responds to the needs of an increasing service sector. Statistics for Innovation is built on the fact that disc overy and innovation in the four sectors pose common challenges to modern statistics, arising from: - complex multivariate processes with indirectly observed quantities; - huge data sets from many sources with few critical observations; - complex dependen cy structures, requiring computationally intensive tools; - sophisticated problems, today unsolvable, demanding advanced methods. Producing the next generation of statistical methods for innovation is achievable thanks to the world-class, cross-disciplina ry teams from academia, research institutes and companies joining the centre. This team has already contributed significantly to innovation in all four sectors. Our corporate partners include major Norwegian companies and smaller technological enterprises with an international marked. NR serves as a link between the innovation challenges in the industry and methodological research. The novelty is to put major efforts in the investigation of new concepts that Norwegian companies want to be the first to app ly. By establishing the centre we focus on ambitious methodological challenges with high innovation potential and medium to high risk. Collaboration between academia, NR and 12 corporate partners will change the way decision are made, risk is handled, dat a are used and staff is trained. Statistics for Innovation is based on a unique concept and is the only centre of this kind. As a new technological platform, it will be a long-lasting advantage for Norway.