Emeritus Associate Professor Christien Thiart

Associate Professor Emeritus

Research Interests: 

Spatial modelling; Spatial Statistics; GIS

Biographical Information

Christien Thiart is a South African with Biometry degrees from the University of Stellenbosch and a masters and PhD in Statistical Sciences from the University of Cape Town.

She held various positions in the Western Cape from biometrician in the Department of Agriculture, to computer science teacher and lecturer in mathematical and statistical sciences. She joined the Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Cape town in 1999 as a senior lecturer, and become an Associated Professor in 2004. She was Deputy Head of the department since 2005 and Head of the department from 2009 -2013.

She has been a research fellow of the CIGCES since 1998 and a founder member of AEON (African earth observatory network , www.aeon.org.za). She manages the geological GIS database. She works extensively on mineral resource potential modeling and related projects over the continents of Gondwana. In AEON, she plays a central role in GIS-based research, the statistical and spatial analysis and modeling of Earth System resources, and data mining.

She is a member of:

  • The South Africa Statistical Association (SASA), served on SASA exco from 2009 - 2010.
  • International Association for Mathematical Geoscience (IAMG), served as Council member from 2008 –current.
  • The International Environmetrics Society (TIES).
  • The International Biometry Society (IBS).

Research Interests

Geostatistics (spatial modelling and kriging).

Linear Models.

Publications

  • Thiart C., Stein A.(2013) Continental - scale kriging of gold - bearing commodities. In: Spatial Statistics, 6 (2013) pp. 57-77
  • Guo D., Guo, R., Thiart C., Cui Y.. Chapter 12: Imprecise Uncertainty Modelling of Air Pollutant PM10. In: Advanced Air Pollution, pp193-212. Farhad Nejadkoorki (Ed). August 2011, Hardcover, 584 pages, InTech - Open Access Publisher. ISBN: 978-953-307-511-2. Online: http://www.intechopen.com
  • de Villiers S., Thiart C., and Basson N.C. 2010. Identification of sources of environmental lead in SouthAfrica from surface soil geochemical maps. Environmental Geochemistry and Health (available on line at: DOI- 10.1007/s10653-010-9288-8)
  • Guo, R., Guo, D. and Thiart C. 2008. Scalar Fuzzy Regression Models. Journal of Uncertain Systems, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 177-186. 2008. ISSN: 1752-8909 (PRINT), ISSN: 1752-8917 (ONLINE).
  • Thiart C., and De Wit, M..J., 2008. African Neoproterozoic Mineral Deposists and Pan African metallogenesis. In Bonham-Carter G. and Cheng W., eds., Progress in Geomathematics , Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, pp303 - 313. ISBN 978-3-540-69496-3.
  • Guo, D., Guo, R., Thiart C. and Oyana T. 2008. GM(1,1)-Kriging Prediction of Soil Dioxin Patterns, Chapter 15, pp 243-253, in the book series Innovations in GIS, title: ôRepresenting, Modeling, and Visualizing the Natural Environmentö, Editors: Nick Mount, Gemma Harvey, Paul Aplin, Gary Priestnall. ISBN: 978-1-4200-5549-8. Publisher: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. (22 December, 2008).
  • de Villiers, S and Thiart C. 2007. The nutrient status of South African rivers: concentrations, trends and fluxes from the 1970's to 2005. South African Journal of Science, 103, no 7-8, 343-349.. ISSN 0038-2353.
  • Guo, D., Guo, R., and Thiart, C. 2007. Predicting Air Pollution Using Fuzzy Membership Grade Kriging. Journal of Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Vol 31, Issue 1, pp33-51, January, 2007. (ISSN: 0198-9715)
  • Guo, D., Guo, R. and Thiart, C. 2007. Credibility Measure Based Membership Grade Kriging. International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems. Vol.15, No. Supp. 2, (April 2007), pp53-66, 2007. B. D. Liu (Editor). (ISSN: 0218-4885)
  • Mabidi, T., Thiart, C. and de Wit, M.J. 2007. Secular changes recorded in mineralization of African crust. Journal of African Earth Sciences, 47, 88-94. doi:10.1016/j.jafrearsci.2006.12.002
  • Thiart, C., Bonham-Carter, G.F., Agterberg F.P., Cheng, Q. and Panahi A. 2006. An Application of the New Omnibus Test for Conditional Independence in Weights-of-evidence Modeling. In Harris, J. (Ed.), Special Volume on GIS Applications in the Earth Sciences, Geological Association of Canada., 131-142.
  • Thiart C., and De Wit, M..J. 2006. Fingerprinting the metal endowment of early continental crust to test for secular changes in global mineralization. In Kesler, S.E. and Ohmoto , H., eds., Evolution of Early EarthÆs Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, and BiosphereùConstraints from Ore Deposits: Geological Society of America Memoir 198, 53-66. ISBN 13 978-0-8137-1198-0
  • de Wit, M.J., and Thiart, C. 2005. Metallogenic fingerprints of Archean catons. In: McDONALD, I., BOYCE, A.J., BUTLER I.B., HERRINGTON, R.J and POLYA, D.A.. (eds) Mineral deposits and Earth Evolution, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 248, p 59-70. (ISBN 1-86239-182-3)
  • Thiart, C., Bonham-Carter, G.F., Agterberg F.P., Cheng, Q. and Panahi A. 2006: An Application of the New Omnibus Test for Conditional Independence in Weights-of-evidence Modeling. In Harris, J. (Ed.), Special Volume on GIS Applications in the Earth Sciences, Geological Association of Canada., 131-142.
  • Stankiewicz J., Thiart C., Masters J.C., Wit M.J. 2006. Did lemurs have sweepstake tickets? An exploration of Simpson's model for the colonization of Madagascar by mammals. Journal of Biogeography 33(2): 221-235.
  • MacPhee D., De Wit M.J., Armstrong R., Decker J. Gwada Q., Hassen N., Jelsma H., Lindenberg N., Reeves C., Reid D., Rogers J., Seal J., Shillington F., Stankiewicz J., Thiart C., Tinker J., and Weeks S. 2003: How the Cape Got its Shape: The geological history of the Cape Peninsula (folded map and guide). Map Studio (Cape Town), www. Mapstudio.co.za.

Conference Proceedings:

  • Thiart C. and Stein A. (2013). Kriging for gold on the continent of Africa using the commodities in the Gondwana database. Spatial Statistics 2013, 4-7 June 2013, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
  • Thiart C., Stein A. and De Wit M. (2013). Kriging on Africa with special reference to the Congo Craton using the Gondwana database. 15th Annual conference of the International association of the mathematical association of geosciences, 2- 6 September 2013
  • Ngwenya Mzabalazo Z., Thiart Christien and Haines Linda M (2012). On the estimation of the kriging variance. 26th International Biometric Conference (IBC2012), Kobe, Japan.
  • Thiart C., Haines L.M. and Ngwenya M.Z. (2012). Comparing the performance of empirical kriging variance estimators in optimal design . ", 9th International Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Applications (geoENV2012), Valencia, Spain.
  • Thiart C, Ngwenya M.,Z., and Haines L. 2010. An investigation into Kriging Variance estimators and their use in Design. Conference Proceedings of the International Association for Mathematical Geoscience (IAMG 2010) -, August 2010, Budapest, Hungary.
  • De Villier S., and Thiart C. 2009. Geochemical Mapping of Extractable Iron in South African Soils. XII Brazilian Congress on Geochemistry and VIII International Symposium on Environmental Geochemistry, October 19 to 22, 2009, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Brazil.
  • Thiart C. and de Wit M. 2009. Mineral potential mapping of gold and related metals in ancient crust: establishing a metallogenic fingerprint of the 3.0-3.5 Ga Barberton greenstone belt, South Africa. Electronic Conference Proceedings of the International Association for Mathematical Geoscience (IAMG 2009) - Computational Methods for the Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, August 23-28, Stanford University, USA, ISBN 978-0-615-33449-3
  • Wabiri N., Thiart C. and Guo R. 2008. Fuzzy variable model for spatial random interval data: A credibility distribution Geostatistics Approach Annual Conference of the South African Statistical Association, University of Pretoria, November 2008.
  • Thiart C., 2008. Clearing a path through the forest - finding your way through spatial statistical software. Annual Conference of the South African Statistical Association, University of Pretoria, November 2008.
  • Guo, D., Thiart, C. and Guo, R. 2007. Credibility Distribution Grade Kriging Prediction. Proceedings of the 12th Conference of the International Association for Mathematical Geology, Beijing, China, August 26-31, 2007, pp 665-669. Editors: Pengda Zhao, Frits Agterberg, and Qiuming Cheng. ISBN: 978-0-9734220-4-7.
  • Thiart C., and De Wit M.J., 2005. Testing for Changes in Mineralization of Continents over 3.5 Billion Years of Earth History. Proceeding of IAMGÆ05: GIS and Spatial Analysis, vol 2, p1182-1186, ISBN 0-9734220-1-7
  • Wabiri, N., M., Guo R., and Thiart C. 2005. Interval-Kriging under a Generalized Metric. Proceedings of the 2005 International Workshop on Recent Advances in Stochastic Operations Research, Canmore , Canada. August 25-26, 2005, pp 290-297. (ISBN 4-939146-03-0)
  • Wabiri, N., M., Guo R., and Thiart C. 2005. Spatial Interval Kernel Regression, Proceedings of 10th International Conference on Industrial Engineering, Theory, Applications and Practice, Clearwater, Florida, United States of America, December 4-7, 2005, pp 406-411 .ISSN: 0-9654506-1-9, Editors: TK Fredericks, SE Butt, A. Pennathur, JE Fernandez, A. Mital.

Postgraduate Projects

Any research that incorporate spatial data and linking to my research interest (Geostatistics, statistical applications in environmental data, Spatial modelling, GIS).

Topics (co-supervised by Prof Linda Haines)

  • Optimal design for spatial data
  • Spatio-temporal modelling
  • Covariance functions in kriging (Is the Matern covariance model really useful?)
  • Some aspects of Spatial point processes.