Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “dynamic model learning”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 955 records · Page 53

Reinforcement Learning for Intelligent Building Energy Management System Control *

A building energy management system (BEMS) is a computer-based system designed to monitor and control a building's energy needs. Modern BEMS rely on the sensing and connectivity capabilities of Internet of Things (IoT) technology to intelligently adjust the energy consumption to reduce cost while respecting the consumers' preferences. Increasingly, control decisions are made based on predictions by models trained using supervised machine learning methods, which still requires control policies to be formulated in a rule-based fashion. When using reinforcement learning (RL) instead, control policies are learned by observing the utility in terms of cost and comfort associated with actions such as a change in the heating system's setpoint. The resulting RL-based controllers can capture not only the dynamics of the building and the associated electrical devices, but also fluctuations in electricity prices and user demand, avoiding the need to combine multiple predictive models with tailored control policies. This chapter will provide an overview of RL-based approaches for BEMS. After sketching the taxonomy of general RL methods, we discuss the implications of relying on the individual methods in a BEMS context. Existing work applying RL is presented along the key devices controlled by BEMS systems. Finally, we summarize the state-of-the-art and sketch limitations and open research directions.

Kotevska, Olivera↗

Explaining and predicting human behavior and social dynamics in simulated virtual worlds: reproducibility, generalizability, and robustness of causal discovery methods

Ground Truth program was designed to evaluate social science modeling approaches using simulation test beds with ground truth intentionally and systematically embedded to understand and model complex Human Domain systems and their dynamics Lazer et al. (Science 369:1060–1062, 2020). Our multidisciplinary team of data scientists, statisticians, experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and visual analytics had a unique role on the program to investigate accuracy, reproducibility, generalizability, and robustness of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) causal structure learning approaches applied to fully observed and sampled simulated data across virtual worlds. In addition, we analyzed the feasibility of using machine learning models to predict future social behavior with and without causal knowledge explicitly embedded. In this paper, we first present our causal modeling approach to discover the causal structure of four virtual worlds produced by the simulation teams—Urban Life, Financial Governance, Disaster and Geopolitical Conflict. Our approach adapts the state-of-the-art causal discovery (including ensemble models), machine learning, data analytics, and visualization techniques to allow a human-machine team to reverse-engineer the true causal relations from sampled and fully observed data. We next present our reproducibility analysis of two research methods team’s performance using a range of causal discovery models applied to both sampled and fully observed data, and analyze their effectiveness and limitations. We further investigate the generalizability and robustness to sampling of the SOTA causal discovery approaches on additional simulated datasets with known ground truth. Our results reveal the limitations of existing causal modeling approaches when applied to large-scale, noisy, high-dimensional data with unobserved variables and unknown relationships between them. We show that the SOTA causal models explored in our experiments are not designed to take advantage from vasts amounts of data and have difficulty recovering ground truth when latent confounders are present; they do not generalize well across simulation scenarios and are not robust to sampling; they are vulnerable to data and modeling assumptions, and therefore, the results are hard to reproduce. Finally, when we outline lessons learned and provide recommendations to improve models for causal discovery and prediction of human social behavior from observational data, we highlight the importance of learning data to knowledge representations or transformations to improve causal discovery and describe the benefit of causal feature selection for predictive and prescriptive modeling.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Hierarchical Testing of a Hybrid Machine Learning‐Physics Global Atmosphere Model

Machine learning (ML)-based models have demonstrated high skill and computational efficiency, often outperforming conventional physics-based models in weather and subseasonal predictions. While prior studies have assessed their fidelity in capturing synoptic-scale atmospheric dynamics, their performance across timescales and under out-of-distribution forcing, such as +3K or +4K uniform-warming forcings, and the sources of biases remain elusive, to establish the model's reliability for Earth science. Here, we design three sets of experiments targeting synoptic-scale phenomena, interannual variability, and out-of-distribution uniform-warming forcings. We evaluate the Neural General Circulation Model (NeuralGCM), a hybrid model integrating a dynamical core with ML-based component, against observations and physics-based Earth system models (ESMs). At the synoptic scale, NeuralGCM captures the evolution and propagation of extratropical cyclones with performance comparable to ESMs. At the interannual scale, when forced by El Niño-Southern Oscillation sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, NeuralGCM successfully reproduces associated teleconnection patterns but exhibits deficiencies in capturing nonlinear response. Under out-of-distribution uniform-warming forcings, NeuralGCM simulates similar responses in global-average temperature and precipitation and reproduces large-scale tropospheric circulation features similar to those in ESMs. Notable weaknesses include overestimating the tracks and spatial extent of extratropical cyclones, biases in the teleconnected wave train triggered by tropical SST anomalies, and differences in upper-level warming and stratospheric circulation responses to SST warming compared to physics-based ESMs. The causes of these weaknesses were explored. Despite the noted weaknesses, NeuralGCM reproduces responses across experiments reasonably and performs comparably to ESMs. By integrating a dynamical core with ML, NeuralGCM shows potential for developing ML-based ESMs.

global warming↗

Model-parallel Fourier neural operators as learned surrogates for large-scale parametric PDEs

Fourier neural operators (FNOs) are a recently introduced neural network architecture for learning solution operators of partial differential equations (PDEs), which have been shown to perform significantly better than comparable deep learning approaches. Once trained, FNOs can achieve speed-ups of multiple orders of magnitude over conventional numerical PDE solvers. However, due to the high dimensionality of their input data and network weights, FNOs have so far only been applied to two-dimensional or small three-dimensional problems. To remove this limited problem-size barrier, we propose a model-parallel version of FNOs based on domain-decomposition of both the input data and network weights. Here, we demonstrate that our model-parallel FNO is able to predict time-varying PDE solutions of over 2.6 billion variables on Perlmutter using up to 512 A100 GPUs and show an example of training a distributed FNO on the Azure cloud for simulating multiphase CO 2 dynamics in the Earth’s subsurface.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

NASA’s Prototype Spectral Water Inversion Processor and Emulator (SWIPE): Towards Global Coastal and Inland Water Quality and Algal Biodiversity Monitoring

Degradation of Earth’s inland water resources due to anthropogenic perturbations and climate anomalies at both local and global scales continues to place human health at substantial risk. There is now a growing necessity to develop pragmatic approaches that allow timely and effective extrapolation of local processes, to spatially resolved global products, and to promote operational and sustainable resource policy management. This presentation will provide updates on NASA’s prototype open-source aquatic modeling platform, Spectral Water Inversion Processor and Emulator (SWIPE), which is a comprehensive, multi-faceted modeling platform for both forward and inverse modeling of diverse aquatic ecosystems from the benthos to top-of-atmosphere (TOA). SWIPE provides a cohesive application which leverages recent advancements in particle modeling, Big Data analytics, and machine learning to develop a high-fidelity synthetic training ground for sensitivity studies and algorithm development for multispectral or upcoming hyperspectral missions. Some of the prominent features of SWIPE to be discussed include: 1. Advanced hyperspectral modeling of globally diverse algal and non-algal particles using a novel two-layer coated sphere scattering model and radiative transfer modeling, 2. Massive, highly detailed synthetic spectral libraries of Analysis-Ready-Data (ARD) which include spectral libraries of particle microphysics, water biogeophysical and optical properties, as well as surface and TOA reflectances at 1 nm resolution, 3. An ensemble of pre-built analytic, machine learning, and deep learning inversion algorithms for various water quality and biodiversity related retrieval parameters and uncertainty quantification, 4. Sensor-agnostic water quality inversion at wide ranging spatial and spectral resolutions including a codebase for seamless application in the Google Earth Engine and NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) for planetary scale analysis. SWIPE will be a fully open-source platform based in python with comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and options for distributed computing on high performance computing clusters or on single, local machines. Further, we will discuss how we envision SWIPE contributing towards a global analysis of coastal and inland water quality dynamics.

top-of-atmosphere (TOA)↗

Emergent symmetries in atomic nuclei: Probing nuclear dynamics and physics beyond the standard model

Dominant shapes naturally emerge in atomic nuclei from first principles, thereby establishing the shape-preserving symplectic Sp(3, \mathbb{R} ℝ ) symmetry as remarkably ubiquitous and almost perfect symmetry in nuclei. We discuss the critical role of this emergent symmetry in enabling machine-learning descriptions of heavy nuclei, ab initio modeling of \alpha α clustering and collectivity, as well as tests of beyond-the-standard-model physics. In addition, the Sp(3, \mathbb{R} ℝ ) and SU(3) symmetries provide relevant degrees of freedom that underpin the ab initio symmetry-adapted no-core shell model with the remarkable capability of reaching nuclei and reaction fragments beyond the lightest and close-to-spherical species.

Launey, Kristina D.↗

Active learning for robust, high-complexity reactive atomistic simulations

Machine learned reactive force fields based on polynomial expansions have been shown to be highly effective for describing simulations involving reactive materials. Nevertheless, the highly flexible nature of these models can give rise to a large number of candidate parameters for complicated systems. In these cases, reliable parameterization requires a well-formed training set, which can be difficult to achieve through standard iterative fitting methods. In this paper, we present an active learning approach based on cluster analysis and inspired by Shannon information theory to enable semi-automated generation of informative training sets and robust machine learned force fields. The use of this tool is demonstrated for development of a model based on linear combinations of Chebyshev polynomials explicitly describing up to four-body interactions, for a chemically and structurally diverse system of C/O under extreme conditions. We show that this flexible training database management approach enables development of models exhibiting excellent agreement with Kohn–Sham density functional theory in terms of structure, dynamics, and speciation.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Frameworks, Algorithms, and Scalable Technologies for Mathematics (FASTMath) SciDAC Institute

As computational models scale to larger computers, the rate at which they produce data has far outstripped the same computers ability to write that data and further the file systems ability to store that data. Almost all of the SciDAC applications, but especially those related to fusion solve very large scale PDEs whose scientific output his impacted by this problem. To gain access to dynamics in an exascale simulation that are not identifiable a priori and to make that dynamical data available to machine learning requires fundamental research in the area of in situ data data analytics. Here data analytics includes compression, visualization, uncertainty quantification, and machine learning. This in situ data analytics will enable on-the-fly spatial and temporal compression of solution dynamics, expose that space-time compressed field to machine learning algorithms that have been specialized to work with dynamically evolving data (existing machine learning algorithms treat data sets as static), greatly improving the opportunity for machine learning to provide feedback to the compression, all within an ongoing simulation, without the need to write data to files. The same concepts are also being applied to uncertainty quantification and multi-fidelity modeling which have similar needs for spatial and temporal compression of the ongoing exascale simulation to perform either without the typical, unacceptable writing of data to files.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Spatiotemporal Super-Resolution with Generative Machine Learning for Creating Renewable Energy Resource Data Under Climate Change Scenarios

As we plan for a future with higher penetrations of renewables and increasing electrification, it becomes more important to understand how the electricity grid will operate under a variety of weather events. We must also consider that the weather our future grid will experience will be different and possibly more extreme than the historical weather that we have extensive data for. We can use data from global climate models (GCMs) to help understand how our climate may change over the next several decades, but there is often a significant gap between the low-resolution GCM data and the high-resolution weather data required to study power systems under specific weather events. Therefore, our objective in this work is to develop tools that can bridge this gap by using low-resolution GCM data to create realistic high-resolution weather datasets that can be used to study renewable energy generation and electricity demand. To accomplish this objective, we have developed a set of generative machine learning models that can rapidly downscale GCM daily average output data at an approximate grid resolution of 100km to hourly data at an approximate 4 km grid resolution. The models can be used to create high resolution data from nearly any GCM included in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) Phase 5 or 6. Our methods include all datasets regularly used to study the integration of wind and solar power plants as well as changes in electricity demand due to heating and cooling loads. These models and datasets enable power systems modelers to study climate change-influenced weather events and their impact on the grid. We have downscaled and validated wind, solar, temperature, and humidity data with very promising results. The generative machine learning methods are computationally efficient and produce data that has similar statistical characteristics to current state-of-the-art historical datasets. We have trained initial generative models and produced an initial dataset collectively referred to as Sup3rCC: Super-Resolved Renewable Energy Resource Data with Climate Change Impacts. The data covers a (mostly) historical period from 2015-2025 and a future period from 2050-2059. We have also taken hypothetical high-electrification load data and scaled the heating and cooling loads with respect to the 2050-2059 high-resolution Sup3rCC meteorology. The results show how future levels of renewable energy generation and electrified load may be impacted by climate change, setting the stage for capacity expansion models to consider a dynamic climate through model years.

climate change↗

Residue Specific Characterization of Electrostatics, Conformational Heterogeneity, and Dynamics of Electron Transfer Proteins with Linear and Nonlinear Infrared Spectroscopy. Final Report

The goal of this research project was to further our understanding of biological electron transfer through the development and application of new methods for studying proteins and their complexes with high spatial and temporal detail. The approach was based on incorporation of reporter bonds with distinct vibrational frequencies at specific locations in proteins and their characterization through the interaction of the bonds with pulses of infrared light. The project focused on the proteins plastocyanin (Pc) and cytochrome (cyt) f, two electron transfer partners in photosynthesis. The first thrust of the project was the incorporation of carbon deuterium bonds as non-perturbative probes at a ligand to the copper ion of Pc and their use to detect changes in the bonding due to the number of electrons at the metal and how the bonding changes upon association with cyt f. Toward developing more advanced approaches to characterize proteins, we incorporated a stronger reporter, the cyano group of cyanophenylalanine, at several locations in Pc and measured the frequency dynamics in the absence and presence of cyt f. The acquired data improved the current model for the protein complex. Notably, the data indicated that the majority of the population is involved in a loosely bound complex, providing insight into the nature of the ensembles formed by electron transfer protein complexes that is not available via other approaches. In addition to learning about the protein complex, we made strides toward developing and improving the new experimental approach to study highly dynamic behaviors of proteins.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A multi-scale pipeline linking drug transcriptomics with pharmacokinetics predicts in vivo interactions of tuberculosis drugs

Tuberculosis (TB) is the deadliest infectious disease worldwide. The design of new treatments for TB is hindered by the large number of candidate drugs, drug combinations, dosing choices, and complex pharmaco-kinetics/dynamics (PK/PD). Here we study the interplay of these factors in designing combination therapies by linking a machine-learning model, INDIGO-MTB, which predicts in vitro drug interactions using drug transcriptomics, with a multi-scale model of drug PK/PD and pathogen-immune interactions called GranSim. We calculate an in vivo drug interaction score (iDIS) from dynamics of drug diffusion, spatial distribution, and activity within lesions against various pathogen sub-populations. The iDIS of drug regimens evaluated against non-replicating bacteria significantly correlates with efficacy metrics from clinical trials. Our approach identifies mechanisms that can amplify synergistic or mitigate antagonistic drug interactions in vivo by modulating the relative distribution of drugs. Our mechanistic framework enables efficient evaluation of in vivo drug interactions and optimization of combination therapies.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A Siamese CNN + KNN-Based Classification Framework for Non-intrusive Load Monitoring

Through the development of smart grids, programs such as demand side response, have been presented as auxiliary services to the real-time operation of distributed networks. In order to provide consumers information on their energy consumption, so that a modulation in consumption is possible, non-intrusive load monitoring has been introduced as an solution to this pattern recognition problem. Non-intrusive load monitoring enables the modeling of electrical loads connected to the low-voltage system, considering only a single measurement point. Presented state-of-the-art solutions though, consider availability of data as well as representation of all possible classes of the environment. This is of course a most conservative hypothesis, since in real-life applications availability of such data is much difficult, as well as the dynamic behavior of models is implicitly evolving in time. Here, a framework that uses neural Siamese networks with k-nearest neighbor clustering is presented toward non-intrusive load monitoring. Online learning feature is implemented, which relaxes the hypothesis of data requirements as well addresses the evolving nature of load profile. k-nearest clustering allows nonlinear characteristic space modelling. Test results using synthetics and real-life data show that the solution, besides obtaining a good generalizability in the classification, also obtained results with an accuracy of 95.77%.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Learning how structures form in drift-wave turbulence

Drift-wave turbulence produces anomalous transport via cross-correlations between fluctuations. This transport has profound implications for confinement, structure formation, and virtually all aspects of the non-linear turbulent dynamics. Herein, we use a data-driven method based on deep learning in order to study turbulent transport in the 2D Hasegawa–Wakatani system and infer a reduced mean-field model from numerical solution. In addition to the usual turbulent diffusion, we find an effect which couples the particle flux to the local gradient of vorticity, which tends to modulate the density profile. The direct coupling to the shear is relatively weak. In addition, the deep learning method finds a model for spontaneous zonal flow generation by negative viscosity, stabilized by non-linear and hyperviscous terms. We compare these results to analytic calculations using quasilinear theory and wave kinetics, finding qualitative agreement, though the calculations miss certain higher-order effects. A simplified, 1-D model for the evolution of the profile, flow, and intensity based on the deep learning results is solved numerically and compared to previous models for staircasing based on bistability. We see that the physics uncovered by the deep learning method provided simple explanations for the formation of zonal structures in the density, flow, and turbulence fields. We highlight the important role of symmetry in the deep learning method and speculate on the portability of the method to other applications.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Improved detection of low-frequency within-host variants from deep sequencing: A case study with human papillomavirus

Abstract High-coverage sequencing allows the study of variants occurring at low frequencies within samples, but is susceptible to false-positives caused by sequencing error. Ion Torrent has a very low single nucleotide variant (SNV) error rate and has been employed for the majority of human papillomavirus (HPV) whole genome sequences. However, benchmarking of intrahost SNVs (iSNVs) has been challenging, partly due to limitations imposed by the HPV life cycle. We address this problem by deep sequencing three replicates for each of 31 samples of HPV type 18 (HPV18). Errors, defined as iSNVs observed in only one of three replicates, are dominated by C→T (G→A) changes, independently of trinucleotide context. True iSNVs, defined as those observed in all three replicates, instead show a more diverse SNV type distribution, with particularly elevated C→T rates in CCG context (CCG→CTG; CGG→CAG) and C→A rates in ACG context (ACG→AAG; CGT→CTT). Characterization of true iSNVs allowed us to develop two methods for detecting true variants: (1) VCFgenie, a dynamic binomial filtering tool which uses each variant’s allele count and coverage instead of fixed frequency cut-offs; and (2) a machine learning binary classifier which trains eXtreme Gradient Boosting models on variant features such as quality and trinucleotide context. Each approach outperforms fixed-cut-off filtering of iSNVs, and performance is enhanced when both are used together. Our results provide improved methods for identifying true iSNVs in within-host applications across sequencing platforms, specifically using HPV18 as a case study.

Virology↗

Optimal Coordination of Distributed Energy Resources Using Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient

Recent studies showed that reinforcement learning (RL) is a promising approach for coordination and control of distributed energy resources (DER) under uncertainties. Many existing RL approaches, including Q-learning and approximate dynamic programming, are based on lookup table methods, which become inefficient when the problem size is large and infeasible when continuous states and actions are involved. In addition, when modeling battery energy storage system (BESS), the loss of life is not reasonably considered into the decision-making process. This paper proposes an innovative deep RL method for DER coordination considering BESS degradation. The proposed deep RL is designed based on an adaptive actor-critic architecture and employs an off-policy deterministic policy gradient method for determining the dispatch operation that minimizes the operation cost and BESS life loss. Case studies were performed to validate the proposed method and demonstrate the effects of incorporating degradation models into control design.

Das, Avijit↗

Combining Observations and Models: A Review of the CARDAMOM Framework for Data‐Constrained Terrestrial Ecosystem Modeling

The rapid increase in the volume and variety of terrestrial biosphere observations (i.e., remote sensing data and in situ measurements) offers a unique opportunity to derive ecological insights, refine process‐based models, and improve forecasting for decision support. However, despite their potential, ecological observations have primarily been used to benchmark process‐based models, as many past and current models lack the capability to directly integrate observations and their associated uncertainties for parameterization. In contrast, data assimilation frameworks such as the CARbon DAta MOdel fraMework (CARDAMOM) and its suite of process‐based models, known as the Data Assimilation Linked Ecosystem Carbon Model (DALEC), are specifically designed for model‐data fusion. This review, motivated by a recent CARDAMOM community workshop, examines the development and applications of CARDAMOM, with an emphasis on its role in advancing ecosystem process understanding. CARDAMOM employs a Bayesian approach, using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm to enable data‐driven calibration of DALEC parameters and initial states (i.e., carbon pool sizes) through observation operators. CARDAMOM's unique ability to retrieve localized model process parameters from diverse datasets—ranging from in situ measurements to global satellite observations—makes it a highly flexible tool for analyzing spatially variable ecosystem responses to environmental change. However, assimilating these data also presents challenges, including data quality issues that propagate into model skill, as well as trade‐offs between model complexity, parameter equifinality, and predictive performance. We discuss potential solutions to these challenges, such as reducing parameter equifinality by incorporating new observations. This review also offers community recommendations for incorporating emerging datasets, integrating machine learning techniques, strengthening collaboration with remote sensing, field, and modeling communities, and expanding CARDAMOM's relevance for localized ecosystem monitoring and decision‐making. CARDAMOM enables a deep, mechanistic understanding of terrestrial ecosystem dynamics that cannot be achieved through empirical analyses of observational datasets or weakly constrained models alone.

Bayesian inference↗

Simulations of Hypervelocity Impact Plasmas

The space environment is fraught with complex plasmas spanning a wide range of densities and temperatures. Much of space plasma research has focused on large-scale changes in the ambient plasma and fields from the Sun to the Earth’s atmosphere, driven primarily by the solar wind. Yet one particular type of space plasma, which forms from a hypervelocity impact (HVI), remains poorly understood. Hypervelocity impactors include both meteoroids and space debris. Meteoroids are naturally occurring objects in space that travel between 11 and 72.8 km/s and originate primarily from comets and asteroids. In contrast, space debris are human-made objects with speeds typically < 11 km/s. Hypervelocity impactors routinely hit spacecraft, yet the physics behind the formation of the plasma and the dynamics of its expansion remain largely unknown. The complexity of this phenomenon necessitates a research approach that includes both experimental studies and numerical simulation in order to understand the underlying physical processes that occur upon formation and expansion of the impact plasma. Our research has focused on providing a comprehensive understanding of plasma generated by hypervelocity impacts by meteoroids and space debris on spacecraft in order to characterize the behavior of the expanding plasma and its interactions with the ambient environment. Previously. we conducted experimental campaigns at a dust accelerator facility that can accelerate particles up to 60 km/s, which is representative of meteoroid speeds, and at a light gas gun facility that can accelerate larger projectiles up to 7 km/s, which is representative of orbital debris. The experiments included plasma, optical and radio frequency (RF) sensors in order to understand the dynamics and associated RF emission resulting from hypervelocity plasmas. For this research, we developed and applied machine learning algorithms to identify which type of impactor would produce RF and physics-based models to determine the source of the RF. This was a one-year research program that resulted in 2 refereed journal publications (uploaded separately).

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗