Prof. Dr. Danijela Markovic-Bredthauer Quantitative Methoden

My research interests include a combination of applied statistics and mathematics and a variety of aspects of climate and global change, conservation ecology, water resources, flight meteorology, econometrics and banking. As such, my career path can be best described as a potpourri of science and economy. Throughout, a central thread is the application of the data mining techniques, signal processing and the development of statistical and/or process-based models. I consider theoretical investigations equally important as finding their application.

I worked at different German universities, led a research group and become a business consultant in an IT, risk management and financial consultancy before heading back to academia. I received my PhD in Civil Engineering from University of Kassel.

If you are interested in joining my team, please send me your CV and a statement of your research interests.

STATY - Data Literacy

Funding: SQM

Description: The digital transformation has a significant impact on the competencies in the working world of tomorrow. The need for data literacy and critical data awareness has become obvious and calls for an effective response in higher education of natural and social sciences. However, active usage of data tools in undergraduate and graduate programs requires that both students and teachers have either good programming skills, or that they have to familiarize themselves with sometimes cumbersome software solutions. Students with excellent programming skills are an exception, few gain some programming skills at the cost of understanding the methodology, while the majority of students leave universities without basic data literacy skills.

STATY is growing out of the effort to bring more data insights to university education across all disciplines of the natural and social sciences. By providing easy access to the methods of classical statistics and machine learning, STATY’s approach is to inspire students to explore issues they are studying in the curriculum on real data, practice interpreting the results and check the source code to see how it is done or to improve the code.

STATY can be used in the process of teaching and learning data science, demonstrations of theoretical concepts across various disciplines, active learning, promotion of teamwork, research and beyond.

European Freshwater Under Climate Change

Funding: DFG

Description: Climate change is expected to exacerbate the current threats to freshwater ecosystems. The aim of the project is to develop a novel framework for assessing climate change vulnerability of freshwater ecosystems. The three climate change vulnerability dimensions are: (i) exposure to climate change (i.e., the extent to which environmental conditions in each catchment will change), (ii) sensitivity to altered environmental conditions (i.e., the lack of potential for species to persist), and (iii) resilience (i.e., ability to cope with climate change). Modelling the effects of climate change requires use of a multitude of modelling techniques as well as substantial methodological advances.

ECOPOTENTIAL

Funding: European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 641762

Description: Earth Observations hold great promise for addressing the environmental and ecological challenges. ECOPOTENTIAL project seeks to improve future ecosystem benefits through earth observations. The project focuses its activities and pilot actions on a targeted set of internationally recognized Protected Areas in Europe and beyond. As a contributor to the ECOPOTENTIAL project, the research group in Osnabrück is focusing on analysis and modeling of the mountain lake ecosystems dynamics (e.g. Lake Ohrid Region). The models will be used to monitor ecosystem state and the temporal evolution and identify ecosystem changes and environmental management needs.

• Statistics
• Econometrics
• Applied Business Research
• Business Data Science
• Applied Data Research
• Empirical Project
• Information Systems and Applied Statistics
• Statistical Methods in Meteorology
• Statistical Software
• Hydrology
• Engineering Hydrology
• Hydromechanics

• Markovic D. Kärcher O. Toward a Holistic Approach to Data Literacy Education: A Framework and Implementation in a Data Science Course for Business Management Students. Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/26939169.2026.2649248, 2026
• Szabolcs M, Kapusi F, Carrizo S, Markovic D, Freyhof J, Cid N, et al. Spatial priorities for freshwater biodiversity conservation in light of catchment protection and connectivity in Europe. PLoS ONE 17(5): e0267801. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267801, 2022
• Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
• Markovic D, Freyhof J, Kärcher O. Continental vs. Global Niche-Based Modelling of Freshwater Species’ Distributions: How Big Are the Differences in the Estimated Climate Change Effects? Water, 13, 816. doi:10.3390/w13060816, 2021
• Kärcher O, Flörke M, Markovic D. Different life stage, different risks: Thermal performance across the life cycle of Salmo trutta and Salmo salar in the face of climate change. Ecology and Evolution, 11(13), 8941-8956. doi:10.1002/ece3.7731, 2021
• Kärcher O, Filstrup CT, Brauns M, Tasevska O, Patceva S, Hellwig N, Walz A, Frank K, Markovic D. Chlorophyll a relationships with nutrients and temperature, and predictions for lakes across perialpine and Balkan mountain regions, Inland Waters, 10:1, 29-41,  doi:10.1080/20442041.2019.1689768, 2020
• Markovic D, Walz A, Kärcher O. Scale effects on the performance of niche-based models of freshwater fish distributions: Local vs. upstream area influences, Ecological Modelling, 411, doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2019.108818, 2019
• Hellwig N, Walz A, Markovic D. Climatic and socioeconomic effects on land cover changes across Europe: Does protected area designation matter? PLoS ONE 14(7), e0219374, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0219374, 2019
• Kärcher O, Frank K, Walz A, Markovic D. Scale effects on the performance of niche-based models of freshwater fish distributions, Ecological Modelling, 405: 33-42, doi:101016/j.ecolmodel.2019.05.006, 2019
• Kärcher O, Hering D, Frank K, Markovic D. Freswater species distributions along thermal gradients, Ecology and Evolution, doi:10.1002/ece3.4659, 2018
• Markovic D, Savrina C, Kärcher O, Walz A, David J. Vulnerability of European Freshwater to Climate Change, Global Change Biology, doi:10.1111/gcb.13657, 2017
• Carrizo SF, Szabolcs L, Kapusi F, Szabolcs M, Kasperidus HD, Scholz M, Markovic D, Freyhof J, Cid N, Cardoso AC, Darwall W. Critical catchments for freshwater biodiversity conservation in Europe: identification, prioritisation and gap analysis. Journal of Applied Ecology, doi:10.1111/1365-2664.12842, 2016
• Markovic D, Carrizo SF, Freyhof J, Szabolcs L, Cid N, Scholz M, Kasperidus HD, Darwall W. Freshwater biodiversity under climate change: distribution range shifts and conservation needs, Diversity and Distributions, doi:10.1111/ddi.12232, 2014
• Markovic D, Hauf T, Röhner P, Speer U. A statistical study of the weather impact on punctuality at Frankfurt Airport, Meteorological applications, doi:10.1002/met.74, 2008
• Markovic D, Koch M. Wavelet and scaling analysis of monthly precipitation extremes in Germany in the 20th century: Interannual to interdecadal oscillations and the North Atlantic Oscillation influence, Water Resources Research, doi:10.1029/2004WR003843, 2005