The summer school held in Portovenere followed a tutorial format with the purpose of familiarizing postdoctoral or postgraduate students in the basic theories and up-to-date applications of present knowledge. Although, from a teaching point of view, a certain areount of overlapping is always useful, in order to avoid excessive duplication direct contact between lecturers expert in the same subject was encouraged during the preparation phase. In recent years computer facilities and theoretical implementation have considerably increased the possibility of solving problems relating to signal detection in noise. Any type of communication may take advantage of signal processing principles, including any type of physical measurement that can be considered as a non-semantic and/or quasi-semantic communication. Since signal processing techniques are common to many branches of science (telecommunications, radar, sonar, seismology, geophysics, nuclear research, space research and others), the advanced and sophisticated levels reached singularly in anyone of them could be used to the advantage of the others. In particular, underwater acoustics is a discipline which, to some extent, represents a practical general model that has permitted the development of signal processing techniques suitable to meet data reduction and interpretation needs of other branches of science. This ASI consequently underlined the inter-disciplinarity of signal processing in order that the principles of outstanding methods developed in one field may be adapted to others.