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At least 415 records · Page 23

Towards Soil Moisture Profile Estimation in the Root Zone Using L- and P-Band Radiometer Observations: A Coherent Modelling Approach

Precision irrigation management and crop water stress assessment rely on accurate estimation of root zone soil moisture. However, only the top 5cm soil moisture can be estimated using the two current passive microwave satellite missions, Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), which operate at L-band (wavelength of ~21cm). Since the contributing depth of the soil to brightness temperature increases with observation wavelength, it is expected that a P-band (wavelength of ~40cm) radiometer could potentially provide soil moisture information from deeper layers of the soil profile. Moreover, by combining both L- and P- bands, it is hypothesized that the soil moisture profile can be estimated even beyond their individual observation depths. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the potential of combined L-band and P-band radiometer observations to estimate the soil moisture profile under flat bare soil using a stratified coherent forward model. Brightness temperature observations at L-band and P-band from a tower based experimental site across a dry (April 2019) and a wet (March 2020) period, covering different soil moisture profile shapes, were used in this study. Results from an initial synthetic study showed that the performance of a combined L-band and P-band approach was better than the performance of using either band individually, with an average depth over which reliable soil moisture profile information could be estimated (i.e. with a target root mean square error (RMSE) of less than 0.04 m3/m3) being 20cm for linear and 15cm for second-order polynomial functions. Other functions were also tested but found to have a poorer performance. Applying the method to the tower-based brightness temperature achieved an average estimation depth of 28cm (20cm) and 5cm (5cm) during the dry and wet periods respectively when using a second-order polynomial (linear) function. These findings highlight the opportunity of a satellite mission with L-band and P-band observations to accurately estimate the soil moisture profile to as deep as 30cm globally.

Foad Brakhasi↗

Is There A Relationship Between Cornered-Hat Methods and A Residual Approach to Estimate System Uncertainty?

Recently a relationship has been established between a now traditional residual diagnostic used to estimate observation, background and analysis error covariances of interest to data assimilation and the three-cornered hat (3CH) method. An existing extension of the traditional residual diagnostic uses residuals from a fixed lag-1 Kalman smoother to retrieve system (model) error covariance. It is thus natural to ask if an additional relationship can be established between this extended residual method and some form of cornered--hat method. The answer might seem straightforward. Unlike in the standard residual estimation case, attempting to estimate model error amounts to estimating the statistics of a residual quantity itself. As shown in this presentation, in such cases the 3CH method becomes trivial: the sought out uncertainty can be derived directly from the covariance of the residual quantity at hand. In the particular case of estimating model error, one of the corners would have to be composed of vectors providing estimates of model error; these are not typically available in practice. Therefore, at first glance the present work finds no relationship between the lag-1 smoother residual diagnostic for system error estimation and cornered--hat methods. However, the work suggests that a two-tiered 3CH might be all that is necessary for system uncertainty to be obtained with 3CH.

Ricardo Todling↗

A Hyperspectral Inversion Framework for Estimating Absorbing Inherent Optical Properties and Biogeochemical Parameters in Inland and Coastal Waters

The simultaneous remote estimation of biogeochemical parameters (BPs) and inherent optical properties (IOPs) from hyperspectral satellite imagery of globally distributed optically distinct inland and coastal waters is a complex, unsolved, non-unique inverse problem. To tackle this problem, we leverage a machine-learning model termed Mixture Density Networks (MDNs). MDNs outperform operational algorithms by calculating the covariance between the simultaneously estimated products. We train the MDNs on a large ( N = 8237) dataset of co-aligned, in situ measured, hyperspectral remote sensing reflectance (R rs ), BPs, and absorbing IOPs from globally representative optically distinct inland and coastal waters. The estimated IOPs include absorption due to phytoplankton (a ph ), chromophoric dissolved organic matter (a cdom ), and non-algal particles (a nap ). The estimated BPs include chlorophyll-a, total suspended solids, and phycocyanin (PC). MDNs dramatically reduce uncertainty in the retrievals, relative to operational algorithms, when using a 50/50 dataset split, where the MDNs are trained on a randomly selected half of the in situ dataset and validated on the other half. Our model is shown to have higher, or equivalent, generalization performance than the calculated operational algorithms available for all BPs and IOPs (except PC) via a leave-one-out cross-validation assessment. The MDNs are sensitive to uncertainties in the hyperspectral satellite R rs , resulting from instrument noise and atmospheric correction; there is a difference of ~37.4–62.8% (using median symmetric accuracy) between the MDNs’ estimates derived from co-located satellite-derived R rs and in situ R rs . Of the IOPs, a cdom and a nap are less sensitive to uncertainties in hyperspectral satellite imagery relative to a ph , with remote estimates of a ph exhibiting incorrect spectral shape and magnitude relative to in situ measured IOPs. Despite the uncertainties in satellite derived R rs , the spatial distributions of BPs and IOPs in MDN-derived product maps of Lake Erie and the Curonian Lagoon, based on imagery taken with the Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) and PRecursore Iper-Spettrale della Missione Applicativa (PRISMA), are confirmed via co-aligned in situ measurements and agree with the literature’s understanding of these well-studied regions. The consistency and accuracy of the model on HICO and PRISMA imagery, despite radiometric uncertainties, demonstrate its applicability to future hyperspectral missions, such as the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, where the simultaneous estimation model will serve as a key part of phytoplankton community composition analysis.

Ryan E. O'Shea↗

Ambient Synchrophasor Measurement Based System Inertia Estimation

This paper develops an algorithm to estimate the system inertia value based on ambient synchrophasor measurement. Informative features are extracted from ambient synchrophasor measurements for machine-learning-based inertia estimation. Besides ambient synchrophasor measurements of FNET/GridEye, other available data relevant to inertia (such as weather and system load data) are also used to improve the inertia estimation accuracy. Then a machine learning algorithm to estimate system inertia is developed. A test dataset including ambient synchrophasor data from FNET/GridEye measurements and the WECC system inertia data from NERC is used to evaluate the performance of the developed inertia estimation method. The average and maximum estimation errors of the developed inertia estimation method is lower than 5% and 10%, respectively. This accuracy is higher than reported accuracy values in existing literature.

CUI, YI↗

The XFaster Power Spectrum and Likelihood Estimator for the Analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background Maps

We present the XFaster analysis package, XFaster is a fast, iterative angular power spectrum estimator based on a diagonal approximation to the quadratic Fisher matrix estimator. XFaster uses Monte Carlo simulations to compute noise biases and filter transfer functions and is thus a hybrid of both Monte Carlo and quadratic estimator methods. In contrast to conventional pseudo-C ℓ based methods, the algorithm described here requires a minimal number of simulations, and does not require them to be precisely representative of the data to estimate accurate covariance matrices for the bandpowers. The formalism works with polarization-sensitive observations and also data sets with identical, partially overlapping, or independent survey regions. The method was first implemented for the analysis of BOOMERanG data (Netterfield et al. 2002; Jones et al. 2006), and also used as part of the Planck analysis (Rocha et al. 2011). Here, we describe the full, publicly available analysis package, written in Python, as developed for the analysis of data from the 2015 flight of the SPIDER instrument (SPIDER Collaboration 2021). The package includes extensions for self-consistently estimating null spectra and for estimating fits for Galactic foreground contributions. We show results from the extensive validation of XFaster using simulations, and its application to the SPIDER data set.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Total Land Water Storage Change over 2003 - 2013 Estimated from a Global Mass Budget Approach

We estimate the total land water storage (LWS) change between 2003 and 2013 using a global water mass budget approach. Hereby we compare the ocean mass change (estimated from GRACE space gravimetry on the one hand, and from the satellite altimetry-based global mean sea level corrected for steric effects on the other hand) to the sum of the main water mass components of the climate system: glaciers, Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets, atmospheric water and LWS (the latter being the unknown quantity to be estimated). For glaciers and ice sheets, we use published estimates of ice mass trends based on various types of observations covering different time spans between 2003 and 2013. From the mass budget equation, we derive a net LWS trend over the study period. The mean trend amounts to +0.30 +/- 0.18 mm/yr in sea level equivalent. This corresponds to a net decrease of −108 +/- 64 cu km/yr in LWS over the 2003-2013 decade. We also estimate the rate of change in LWS and find no significant acceleration over the study period. The computed mean global LWS trend over the study period is shown to be explained mainly by direct anthropogenic effects on land hydrology, i.e. the net effect of groundwater depletion and impoundment of water in man-made reservoirs, and to a lesser extent the effect of naturally-forced land hydrology variability. Our results compare well with independent estimates of human-induced changes in global land hydrology.

Water↗

Estimating and Forecasting Time-Varying Groundwater Recharge in Fractured Rock: A State-Space Formulation with Preferential and Diffuse Flow to the Water Table

Rapid infiltration following precipitation may result in groundwater contamination from surface contaminants or pathogens. In fractured rock, contaminants can migrate rapidly to points of groundwater withdrawals. In contrast to the temporal availability of groundwater quality chemical indicators, meteorological and groundwater level observations are available in real-time to estimate time-varying recharge, which can act as a surrogate to identify periods of rapid infiltration that may indicate contamination susceptibility. Estimating recharge using methods, such as base-flow recession, unsaturated infiltration models, or Water-Table Fluctuations (WTF), cannot capitalize on currently available technologies and telecommunication infrastructure to conduct real-time recharge estimation at scales relevant to characterizing rapid infiltration. We present a linear, physics-based State-Space (SS) model of one-dimensional infiltration to estimate recharge, which includes preferential and diffuse-flow to the water table. The model can take advantage of real-time data for water-table altitude, precipitation, and evapotranspiration. Model parameters are calibrated over an observation period, and the Kalman Filter (KF) is subsequently applied to continuously update the observed (water-table altitude) and unobserved (groundwater recharge) system states and predict future states as new data become available. The SS/KF algorithm is demonstrated at the Masser Groundwater Recharge Site in Pennsylvania, USA and comparisons are made with recharge estimates from WTF methods. Model results indicate that the frequency of observations (daily versus sub-daily) dictates the allocation between preferential and diffuse flow. Additionally, because infiltration processes encompass many nonlinearities, model parameters estimated from observation periods need to be updated at least seasonally to account for changing recharge conditions.

groundwater, Recharge, infiltration, recursive est↗

Dynamic Power Network State Estimation with Asynchronous Measurements

The operation of distribution networks is becoming increasingly volatile, due to fast variations of renewables and, hence, net-loading conditions. To perform a reliable state estimation under these conditions, this paper considers the case where measurements from meters, phasor measurement units, and distributed energy resources are collected and processed in real time to produce estimates of the state at a fast time scale. Streams of measurements collected in real time and at heterogenous rates render the underlying processing asynchronous, and poses severe strains on workhorse state estimation algorithms. In this work, a real-time state estimation algorithm is proposed, where data are processed on the fly. Starting from a regularized least-squares model, and leveraging appropriate linear models, the proposed scheme boils down to a linear dynamical system where the state is updated based on the previous estimate and on the measurement gathered from a few available sensors. The estimation error is shown to be always bounded under mild condition. Numerical simulations are provided to corroborate the analytical findings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Real-Time Distribution System State Estimation with Asynchronous Measurements

We report state estimation is a fundamental task in power systems. Although distribution systems are increasingly equipped with sensing devices and smart meters, measurements are typically reported at different rates and asynchronously; these aspects pose severe strains on workhorse state estimation algorithms, which are designed to process batches of data collected in a synchronous manner from all the measurement units. In this paper, we develop a novel state estimation algorithm to continuously update the estimate of the state based on measurements received in an asynchronous manner from measurement units. The synthesis of the algorithm hinges on a proximal-point type method, implemented in an online fashion, and capable of processing measurements received sequentially from sensors. A performance analysis is presented by providing bounds on the estimation error in terms of the mean and variance that hold at each iteration and asymptotically. The scheme is also compared with a more traditional Weighted Least Squares estimator that compensates for the lack of measurement data by using, as pseudo measurements, the measurement retrieved during a certain time window. Numerical simulations on the IEEE 37-bus feeder corroborate the analytical findings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

CCF Parameter Estimations, 2020 Update

This report documents the quantitative results of the common-cause failure (CCF) data collection effort (which included data through 2020) and summarizes the results of the parameter estimation quantification process performed on CCF data in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) CCF database. This is the 2020 update to NUREG/CR-5497, updating data and parameter estimations for CCFs. This release, CCF Parameter Estimation 2020, reflects the CCF data contained within the CCF database, https://rads.inl.gov/Pages/CCF.aspx, by executing (in August 2021) the CCF query rules in the folder SPAR Rules 2020. The data covers the period from 1/1/2006 to 12/31/2020, the most recent 15-year period in which data are available. The use of the most recent rolling 15-year data in parameter estimation differs from previous updates, in which 1/1/1997 was used as the starting date (e.g., 1/1/1997 to 12/31/2015 for the 2015 update, 1/1/1997 to 12/31/2012 for the 2012 update). The new date range (i.e., the most recent 15-year period), was selected for this CCF update so as to be consistent with the date range chosen for the component reliability parameter estimation, and with the effort to include sufficient data for analysis while simultaneously reflecting the most recent industry performance. These results are appropriate for use in probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) studies, including the Standardized Plant Analysis Risk (SPAR) models of commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs) in the U.S. This update may be referred as: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "CCF Parameter Estimations, 2020 Update," https://nrcoe.inl.gov/publicdocs/CCF/ccfparamest2020.pdf, November 2021.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Regional Real-Time PV Spinning Reserve Estimator

Curtailed photovoltaic (PV) generation is a zero-marginal-cost spinning reserve that can be used for a number of active power control services. Unlike traditional spinning reserve providers, however, i.e., fossil-fueled generators, which have well-defined operating characteristics, e.g., available headroom or potential high limit (PHL), PV plants have by nature variable and uncertain operating characteristics. To ensure the effective coordination between PV plants and the system operator during an active power control event, accurate knowledge of the PV PHL is essential. It ensures that enough headroom is reserved by the PV plants to deliver the award services in real time and informs feasible dispatch decisions made by the market operator. To tackle this challenge, a novel reference-control grouping-based PV plant reserve estimation method has been proposed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory under past projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office. The estimation method separates inverters within a plant into two groups: a control group and a reference group. While the reference group is reserved to operate at its PHL, the control group can be curtailed to provide the grid services. Real-time outputs from the reference inverters are used to estimate the PHL for the whole plant based on the ratio between capacities of the reference group and of the plant. This work further enhances the methodology by (1) improving the model accuracy through machine learning; (2) automating the reference inverter selection through correlation analysis; (3) considering estimation look-ahead windows; and (4) applying to regional spinning reserve estimation. Significant performance improvement has been observed based on real-world data collected by CAISO, Southern Company, and Terabase Energy. Compared with the original scaling method, the newly proposed machine learning-based approach reduces the estimation errors by 30% and 13% at the plant level and region level, respectively. Results obtained from this project are intended to be used by grid operators, market operators, balancing authorities, and PV plant owners and operators to facilitate PV participation in ancillary service markets. Regulators, policymakers, and system planners can also consider the results of this work in their decision-making processes. In addition to the performance improvement on the existing reference-control based grouping method, we also investigated how the variability of PV generation from a single PV inverter can be used to represent the variability of PV generation at the plant level.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

A Review and Outlook on Energy Consumption Estimation Models for Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles (EVs) are critical to the transition to a low-carbon transportation system. The successful adoption of EVs heavily depends on energy consumption models that can accurately and reliably estimate electricity consumption. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of EV energy consumption models, aiming to provide guidance for future development of EV applications. Here, we summarize influential variables of EV energy consumption into four categories: vehicle component, vehicle dynamics, traffic and environment related factors. We classify and discuss EV energy consumption models in terms of modeling scale (microscopic vs. macroscopic) and methodology (data-driven vs. rule-based). Our review shows trends of increasing macroscopic models that can be used to estimate trip-level EV energy consumption and increasing data-driven models that utilized machine learning technologies to estimate EV energy consumption based on large volume real-world data. We identify research gaps for EV energy consumption models, including the development of energy estimation models for modes other than personal vehicles (e.g., electric buses, electric trucks, and electric non-road vehicles); the development of energy estimation models that are suitable for applications related to vehicle-to-grid integration; and the development of multi-scale energy estimation models as a holistic modeling approach.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Center of Mass Estimation for a Spinning Spacecraft Using Doppler Shift of the GPS Carrier Frequency

A sequential filter is presented for estimating the center of mass (CM) of a spinning spacecraft using Doppler shift data from a set of onboard Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. The advantage of the proposed method is that it is passive and can be run continuously in the background without using commanded thruster firings to excite spacecraft dynamical motion for observability. The NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is used as a test case for the CM estimator. The four MMS spacecraft carry star cameras for accurate attitude and spin rate estimation. The angle between the spacecraft nominal spin axis (for MMS this is the geometric body Z-axis) and the major principal axis of inertia is called the coning angle. The transverse components of the estimated rate provide a direct measure of the coning angle. The coning angle has been seen to shift slightly after every orbit and attitude maneuver. This change is attributed to a small asymmetry in the fuel distribution that changes with each burn. This paper shows a correlation between the apparent mass asymmetry deduced from the variations in the coning angle and the CM estimates made using the GPS Doppler data. The consistency between the changes in the coning angle and the CM provides validation of the proposed GPS Doppler method for estimation of the CM on spinning spacecraft.

Estimation↗

Multi-Pass Sequential Mini-Batch Stochastic Gradient Descent Algorithms for Noise Covariance Estimation in Adaptive Kalman Filtering

Estimation of unknown noise covariances in a Kalman filter is a problem of significant practical interest in a wide array of applications. Although this problem has a long history, reliable algorithms for their estimation were scant, and necessary and sufficient conditions for identifiability of the covariances were in dispute until recently. Necessary and sufficient conditions for covariance estimation and a batch estimation algorithm were presented in our previous study. This paper presents stochastic gradient descent algorithms for noise covariance estimation in adaptive Kalman filters that are an order of magnitude faster than the batch method for similar or better root mean square error. More significantly, these algorithms are applicable to non-stationary systems where the noise covariances can occasionally jump up or down by an unknown magnitude. The computational efficiency of the new algorithms stems from adaptive thresholds for convergence, recursive fading memory estimation of the sample cross-correlations of the innovations, and accelerated stochastic gradient descent algorithms. The comparative evaluation of the proposed methods on a number of test cases demonstrates their computational efficiency and accuracy.

Adaptive Kalman filtering↗

Synchrophasors-based Master State Awareness Estimator for Cybersecurity in Power Grid: Testbed Implementation & Field Demonstration

The integration of distributed energy resources(DERs) and expansion of complex network in the distribution grid requires an advanced distributed state estimator to monitor the grid health at micro-level. The distribution state estimator will improve the situational awareness and resiliency of distributed power system. This paper proposes a synchrophasors-based master state awareness (MSA) estimator to enhance the cybersecurity in distribution grid by providing a real-time estimation of system operating states to control center operators. In this paper, the proposed MSA estimator utilizes only phasor measurements, bus magnitudes and angles, from phasor measurement units (PMUs),deployed in local substations, to estimate the system states and also detects data integrity attacks, such as load tripping attack that disconnects the load. To validate the proof of concept, we implement the proposed methodology in cyber-physical testbed environment at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Electric Grid Security Testbed. Further, to address the “valley of death” and support technology commercialization, field demonstration is also performed at the Critical Infrastructure Test Range Complex(CITRC) at the INL. Our experimental results reveal a promising performance in detecting load tripping attack and providing an accurate situational awareness through an alert visualization dashboard in real-time

42 ENGINEERING↗

Benchmark estimate of the effect of anthropogenic emissions on the ocean surface

Abstract Investigations into the role of anthropogenic emissions in the occurrence of extreme weather often use a method that compares simulations of atmospheric climate models run under a factual scenario of historical boundary conditions observed during the period of the event against simulations run under a counterfactual scenario of what those boundary conditions might naturally have been over that same period in the absence of anthropogenic emissions. A particular requirement for this experiment design is an accurate estimation of ocean surface boundary conditions for use by the counterfactual natural simulations. Here we use output from the CMIP5 multi‐climate‐model archive to develop a robust estimate of sea surface temperatures and sea ice conditions for use in counterfactual natural simulations, intended as a benchmark estimate to facilitate comparison across climate models and across studies. This development includes tests to ensure that the final estimate is stable from year‐to‐year and stable against other perturbations to the methodology, as well as consideration of the strengths and weaknesses in comparison to other available attributable warming estimates. While this estimate is tailored specifically for the International CLIVAR C20C+ Detection and Attribution Project, it can be used by related projects as well.

Stone, Dáithí A.↗

Estimating basis functions in massive fields under the spatial mixed effects model

Abstract Spatial prediction is commonly achieved under the assumption of a Gaussian random field by obtaining maximum likelihood estimates of parameters, and then using the kriging equations to arrive at predicted values. For massive datasets, fixed rank kriging using the expectation–maximization algorithm for estimation has been proposed as an alternative to the usual but computationally prohibitive kriging method. The method reduces computation cost of estimation by redefining the spatial process as a linear combination of basis functions and spatial random effects. A disadvantage of this method is that it imposes constraints on the relationship between the observed locations and the knots. We develop an alternative method that utilizes the spatial mixed effects model, but allows for additional flexibility by estimating the range of the spatial dependence between the observations and the knots via an alternating expectation conditional maximization algorithm. Experiments show that our methodology improves estimation without sacrificing prediction accuracy while also minimizing the additional computational burden of extra parameter estimation. The methodology is applied to a temperature dataset archived by the United States National Climate Data Center, with improved results over previous methodology.

Pazdernik, Karl↗

Estimating and Evaluating Roughness Length and Displacement Height in Heterogeneous Urban Environments

The roughness length (z 0 ) and displacement height (z d ) are essential surface-layer parameters in numerical models (e.g., weather, climate, wall-modeled LES, etc.). This work evaluates the consistency of z 0 and z d estimates from morphometric and anemometric methods using data from two eddy-covariance flux towers (AmeriFlux US-INg and US-INc) in Indianapolis, IN. Results show inconsistencies in estimated z 0 and z d values depending on the chosen method. The two evaluated anemometric methods estimate non-physical values of z d when compared to roughness elements surrounding both towers. Additionally, predictions of mean wind speed using surface-layer similarity theory with morphometric estimates exhibit a bias during near-neutral and stable conditions relative to observations. The overestimation of mean wind speed by surface layer similarity theory is consistent with previous observational and modeling studies in urban areas, suggesting that the application of similarity theories to urban environments may have limitations. Differentiation of vegetation from built structures appears to impact morphometric z 0 and z d estimates, particularly where vegetation is abundant; however, it has little impact on correcting biases in the similarity theory. Specifically, we find that existing similarity theories using morphometric estimates underestimate integral velocity and length scales, and the degree of underestimation depends on the stability conditions. Accounting for the degree of anisotropy in surface-layer turbulence helps reduce the biases between similarity theories and observations during unstable conditions, but not in near-neutral cases. Future work is needed to identify the cause of such biases for near-neutral conditions.

Aerodynamic roughness length↗