Probabilistic forecasts provided by numerical ensemble prediction systems have systematic errors and are typically underdispersive. This is especially true over complex topography with extensive terrain induced small-scale effects which cannot be resolved by the ensemble system. To alleviate...

The capabilities of the package exams for automatic generation of (statistical) exams in R are extended by adding support for learning management systems: As in earlier versions of the package exam generation is still based on separate Sweave files for each exercise - but rather than just...

Structured additive regression (STAR) models provide a flexible framework for modeling possible nonlinear effects of covariates: They contain the well established frameworks of generalized linear models (GLM) and generalized additive models (GAM) as special cases but also allow a wider class of...

Bayesian analysis provides a convenient setting for the estimation of complex generalized additive regression models (GAMs). Since computational power has tremendously increased in the past decade it is now possible to tackle complicated inferential problems, e.g., with Markov chain Monte Carlo...

Flexible spatio-temporal models are widely used to create reliable and accurate estimates for precipitation climatologies. Most models are based on square root transformed monthly or annual means, where a normal distribution seems to be appropriate. This assumption becomes invalid on a daily...

A probabilistic forecasting method to predict thunderstorms in the European Eastern Alps is developed. A statistical model links lightning occurrence from the ground-based ALDIS detection network to a large set of direct and derived variables from a numerical weather prediction (NWP) system. The...

A method to predict lightning by postprocessing numerical weather prediction (NWP) output is developed for the region of the European Eastern Alps. Cloud-to-ground-flashes - detected by the ground-based ALDIS network - are counted on the 18x18 km2 grid of the 51-member NWP ensemble of the...

Gaussian Structured Additive Regression provides a flexible framework for additive decomposition of the expected value with nonlinear covariate effects and time trends, unit- or cluster-specific heterogeneity, spatial heterogeneity, and complex interactions between covariates of different types....

Modeling real estate prices in the context of hedonic models often involves fitting a Generalized Additive Model, where only the mean of a (lognormal) distribution is regressed on a set of variables without taking other parameters of the distribution into account. Thus far, the application of...

Models with structured additive predictor provide a very broad and rich framework for complex regression modeling. They can deal simultaneously with nonlinear covariate effects and time trends, unit- or cluster-specific heterogeneity, spatial heterogeneity and complex interactions between...