Learning from limited data in Earth system sciences: optimal selection of datasets and algorithms

Dr.in Claudia Acquistapace , Prof. Dr. Aleksandar Bojchevski & Prof. in Dr.in Nikki Vercauteren

5 - 7. November 2025, Cologne

Small data challenges are particularly common in Earth System Sciences. Examples include the study of rare and extreme events, which tend to have high societal impact but are often poorly forecasted by classical models. The workshop will discuss targeted machine learning methods for “small data” problems - when the underlying learning task is highly underdetermined, due to a large problem dimension relative to the size of training datasets. The goal is to bring together experts of data and computer sciences with experts of Earth system sciences that use and possibly develop such methods. We will discuss and identify:

• Optimal selection or treatment of data: How can one augment the information content of the limited dataset by smart data selection or preprocessing approaches? How can one benefit from multiple data sources?
• Highly efficient approaches to the small data problem, as well as overfitting challenges in artificial intelligence.
• Techniques to study and improve reliability of machine learning methods and quantify uncertainty.
• Key challenges motivated by AI application in Earth system sciences.

Invited Speakers: 

• Claudia Acquistapace
• Davide Bassetti
• Dwaipayan Chatterjee
• Francesco Marra
• Julian Quinting
• Nedjeljka Zagar

We welcome contributions related to:

• Methods that can learn efficiently from little data
• Optimizing the information content from limited data (e.g. for extreme events such as hail or rain floods, using alternative data sources, fine-tuning methodologies, etc.)
• Optimizing loss/fitness functions for rare events, e.g. reweighing
• Methods that can provide guarantees on false positive discovery rates
• Methods that disentangle epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty
• Application-specific interpretability methods  

 

Location: In person at the University of Cologne, Klosterstraße 79b, 50931 Cologne, Room 100 “Repräsentationssaal”

 

Register now here! Registration is free of charge, and the deadline is 15 September.