From October 26 to 28, the XVI Galician Congress of Statistics and Operations Research (SGAPEIO), of which CITIC was a sponsor, was held at the School of Civil Engineering of the UDC.

The event aims to contribute to the dissemination of advances in the theory, applications and didactics of statistics and operations research. To this end, it offers various conferences, round tables, workshops and communications related to this field, as well as several cultural activities, such as visits to various points of interest in the city. In addition, this edition coincides with the I Conference on Teaching Innovation in Statistics and Operations Research, aimed at teachers of ESO, high school and universities.

This year, the prize in the applied modality of Young Researchers of the congress was awarded to CITIC doctoral student Naomi Diz Rosales for her work “Predicting intensive care unit bed occupancy under random regression coefficient Poisson models: Application to the COVID-19 pandemic in Galicia”, also authored by María José Lombardía, member of CITIC, and Domingo Morales of the Miguel Hernández University (UMH).

The work, which is part of the researcher’s doctoral thesis, starts from the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting its far-reaching consequences such as the collapse of intensive care units (ICUs). Given this premise, the research presents an innovative small-area estimation technique based on the definition of generalized linear mixed models with random slope. The developed methodology has been successfully applied in the estimation and prediction, up to seven days in advance, of ICU occupancy in the seven health areas of Galicia (between 02/11/2020 and 06/03/2022) demonstrating its flexibility to adapt to all types of epidemic periods and variants. These results underline its potential to be successfully applied in other epidemic contexts.

More information on the congress: XVI SGAPEIO Congress.