Advantages and Pitfalls of Pattern Recognition : Selected Cases in Geophysics

Advantages and Pitfalls of Pattern Recognition presents various methods of pattern recognition and classification, useful to geophysicists, geochemists, geologists, geographers, data analysts, and educators and students of geosciences. Scientific and technological progress has dramatically improved the knowledge of our planet with huge amounts of digital data available in various fields of Earth Sciences, such as geology, geophysics, and geography. This has led to a new perspective of data analysis, requiring specific techniques that take several features into consideration rather than single parameters. Pattern recognition techniques offer a suitable key for processing and extracting useful information from the data of multivariate analysis. This book explores both supervised and unsupervised pattern recognition techniques, while providing insight into their application.

• Offers real-world examples of techniques for pattern recognition and handling multivariate data
• Includes examples, applications, and diagrams to enhance understanding
• Provides an introduction and access to relevant software packages

Horst Langer has developed methods for automatic alert systems and early warning on Mount Etna as well as tools that are routinely operated in the monitoring room of the institute and are part of the alert system for Civil Protection. Aside from his documented experience in the application of various pattern recognition techniques, he has also published computer programs for pattern recognition.

Susanna Falsaperla has a long experience in the application of pattern recognition techniques and was among the first seismologists to apply automatic classification to seismic signals on volcanoes. She has made extensive use of pattern recognition in volcanology to relate multidisciplinary data to volcanic unrest and eruptive activity.

Conny Hammer has worked on automatic classification of seismic signals in continuous data streams and has introduced novel concepts and tools into the seismological community from fields of machine learning (e.g., speech processing). Her automatic recognition tools are currently implemented in daily observatory routines. Besides automatic event detection, she has focused on the application of machine learning tools in seismic site characterization.