Geometry Seminar

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Water, sand, and computational geometry

Speaker: Bettina Speckmann, TU Eindhoven

Location: Online

Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2025, 2 p.m.

Synopsis:

Rivers, estuaries, intertidal zones, and other hydrological systems often give rise to complex networks of interconnected channels. The analysis of such networks is a powerful tool which allows geomorphologists to answer fundamental questions about dynamics of nodes, emergent network properties and the propagation of disturbances. In this talk I will explain how to use techniques from computational geometry and computational topology to find and analyse such networks automatically. Specifically, I will first describe algorithms based on discrete Morse theory that extract meaningful networks from braided river systems and estuaries based on sediment volume. Then I will show how to use a variant of the interleaving distance for merge trees to track river networks over time.

Notes:

On Zoom.  Please contact Boris Aronov to be put on the email announcement list and obtain Zoom details.