Standard maximum likelihood or Bayesian approaches to parameter estimation for stochastic differential equations are not robust to perturbations in the continuous-in-time data. In this paper, we give a rather elementary explanation of this observation in the context of continuous-time parameter estimation using an ensemble Kalman filter. We employ the frequentist perspective to shed new light on three robust estimation techniques; namely subsampling the data, rough path corrections, and data filtering. We illustrate our findings through a simple numerical experiment.
We consider the problem of robust estimation involving filtering and smoothing for nonlinear state space models which are disturbed by heavy-tailed impulsive noises. To deal with heavy-tailed noises and improve the robustness of the traditional nonlinear Gaussian Kalman filter and smoother, we propose in this work a general framework of robust filtering and smoothing, which adopts a new maximum correntropy criterion to replace the minimum mean square error for state estimation. To facilitate understanding, we present our robust framework in conjunction with the cubature Kalman filter and smoot…
This paper uses a probabilistic approach to analyze the converge of an ensemble Kalman filter solution to an exact Kalman filter solution in the simplest possible setting, the scalar case, as it allows us to build upon a rich literature of scalar probability distributions and non-elementary functions. To this end we introduce the bare-bones Scalar Pedagogical Ensemble Kalman Filter (SPEnKF). We show that in the asymptotic case of ensemble size, the expected value of both the analysis mean and variance estimate of the SPEnKF converges to that of the true Kalman filter, and that the variances of…
Ensemble Kalman inversion is a parallelizable derivative-free method to solve inverse problems. The method uses an ensemble that follows the Kalman update formula iteratively to solve an optimization problem. The ensemble size is crucial to capture the correct statistical information in estimating the unknown variable of interest. Still, the ensemble is limited to a size smaller than the unknown variable's dimension for computational efficiency. This study proposes a strategy to correct the sampling error due to a small ensemble size, which improves the performance of the ensemble Kalman inver…
This paper provides a unified perspective of iterative ensemble Kalman methods, a family of derivative-free algorithms for parameter reconstruction and other related tasks. We identify, compare and develop three subfamilies of ensemble methods that differ in the objective they seek to minimize and the derivative-based optimization scheme they approximate through the ensemble. Our work emphasizes two principles for the derivation and analysis of iterative ensemble Kalman methods: statistical linearization and continuum limits. Following these guiding principles, we introduce new iterative ensem…
The spatial dependent unknown acoustic source is reconstructed according noisy multiple frequency data on a remote closed surface. Assume that the unknown function is supported on a bounded domain. To determine the support, we present a statistical inversion algorithm, which combines the ensemble Kalman filter approach with level set technique. Several numerical examples show that the proposed method give good numerical reconstruction.
Concurrent observation technologies have made high-precision real-time data available in large quantities. Data assimilation (DA) is concerned with how to combine this data with physical models to produce accurate predictions. For spatial-temporal models, the Ensemble Kalman Filter with proper localization techniques is considered to be a state-of-the-art DA methodology. This article proposes and investigates a localized Ensemble Kalman Bucy Filter (l-EnKBF) for nonlinear models with short-range interactions. We derive dimension-independent and component-wise error bounds and show the long tim…
Inverse problems are more challenging when only partial data are available in general. In this paper, we propose a two-step approach combining the extended sampling method and the ensemble Kalman filter to reconstruct an elastic rigid obstacle using partial data. In the first step, the approximate location of the unknown obstacle is obtained by the extended sampling method. In the second step, the ensemble Kalman filter is employed to reconstruct the shape. The location obtained in the first step guides the construction of the initial particles of the ensemble Kalman filter, which is critical …
We study the use of novel techniques arising in machine learning for inverse problems. Our approach replaces the complex forward model by a neural network, which is trained simultaneously in a one-shot sense when estimating the unknown parameters from data, i.e. the neural network is trained only for the unknown parameter. By establishing a link to the Bayesian approach to inverse problems, an algorithmic framework is developed which ensures the feasibility of the parameter estimate w.r. to the forward model. We propose an efficient, derivative-free optimization method based on variants of the…
Multilevel ensemble Kalman filtering for spatially extended models
Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg（奥尔登堡卡尔·冯·奥西茨基大学）；University of Oslo（奥斯陆大学）；Oak Ridge National Laboratory（橡树岭国家实验室）；École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne（洛桑联邦理工学院）；KAUST（阿卜杜拉国王科技大学）
The Ensemble Kalman inversion (EKI) method is a method for the estimation of unknown parameters in the context of (Bayesian) inverse problems. The method approximates the underlying measure by an ensemble of particles and iteratively applies the ensemble Kalman update to evolve (the approximation of the) prior into the posterior measure. For the convergence analysis of the EKI it is common practice to derive a continuous version, replacing the iteration with a stochastic differential equation. In this paper we validate this approach by showing that the stochastic EKI iteration converges to pat…
Ensemble Kalman inversion (EKI) is a derivative-free optimization method that lies between the deterministic and the probabilistic approaches for inverse problems. EKI iterates the Kalman update of ensemble-based Kalman filters, whose ensemble converges to a minimizer of an objective function. EKI regularizes ill-posed problems by restricting the ensemble to the linear span of the initial ensemble, or by iterating regularization with early stopping. Another regularization approach for EKI, Tikhonov EKI, penalizes the objective function using the $l_2$ penalty term, preventing overfitting in th…
We introduce a new multilevel ensemble Kalman filter method (MLEnKF) which consists of a hierarchy of independent samples of ensemble Kalman filters (EnKF). This new MLEnKF method is fundamentally different from the preexisting method introduced by Hoel, Law and Tempone in 2016, and it is suitable for extensions towards multi-index Monte Carlo based filtering methods. Robust theoretical analysis and supporting numerical examples show that under appropriate regularity assumptions, the MLEnKF method has better complexity than plain vanilla EnKF in the large-ensemble and fine-resolution limits, f…
This paper introduces a computational framework to incorporate flexible regularization techniques in ensemble Kalman methods for nonlinear inverse problems. The proposed methodology approximates the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimate of a hierarchical Bayesian model characterized by a conditionally Gaussian prior and generalized gamma hyperpriors. Suitable choices of hyperparameters yield sparsity-promoting regularization. We propose an iterative algorithm for MAP estimation, which alternates between updating the unknown with an ensemble Kalman method and updating the hyperparameters in the r…
This work develops a new multifidelity ensemble Kalman filter (MFEnKF) algorithm based on linear control variate framework. The approach allows for rigorous multifidelity extensions of the EnKF, where the uncertainty in coarser fidelities in the hierarchy of models represent control variates for the uncertainty in finer fidelities. Small ensembles of high fidelity model runs are complemented by larger ensembles of cheaper, lower fidelity runs, to obtain much improved analyses at only small additional computational costs. We investigate the use of reduced order models as coarse fidelity control…
Data assimilation provides algorithms for widespread applications in various fields. It is of practical use to deal with a large amount of information in the complex system that is hard to estimate. Weather forecasting is one of the applications, where the prediction of meteorological data are corrected given the observations. Numerous approaches are contained in data assimilation. One specific sequential method is the Kalman Filter. The core is to estimate unknown information with the new data that is measured and the prior data that is predicted. As a matter of fact, there are different impr…
The Bayesian approach to inverse problems is widely used in practice to infer unknown parameters from noisy observations. In this framework, the ensemble Kalman inversion has been successfully applied for the quantification of uncertainties in various areas of applications. In recent years, a complete analysis of the method has been developed for linear inverse problems adopting an optimization viewpoint. However, many applications require the incorporation of additional constraints on the parameters, e.g. arising due to physical constraints. We propose a new variant of the ensemble Kalman inv…
The Ensemble Kalman Filter method can be used as an iterative particle numerical scheme for state dynamics estimation and control--to--observable identification problems. In applications it may be required to enforce the solution to satisfy equality constraints on the control space. In this work we deal with this problem from a constrained optimization point of view, deriving corresponding optimality conditions. Continuous limits, in time and in the number of particles, allows us to study properties of the method. We illustrate the performance of the method by using test inverse problems from …
Comparing an Ensemble Kalman Filter to a 4DVAR Data Assimilation System in Chaotic Dynamics
Universidade Federal de Pelotas – Faculdade de Meteorologia（佩洛塔斯联邦大学气象学院）；Departamento de Ciência e Tecnologia Aeroespacial – Instituto de Aeronáutica e Espaço – Divisão de Ciências Atmosféricas（航空航天科学与技术系 – 航空与航天研究所 – 大气科学部）
Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；University of Birmingham（伯明翰大学）
We propose an affine-mapping based variational Ensemble Kalman filter for sequential Bayesian filtering problems with generic observation models. Specifically, the proposed method is formulated as to construct an affine mapping from the prior ensemble to the posterior one, and the affine mapping is computed via a variational Bayesian formulation, i.e., by minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the transformed distribution through the affine mapping and the actual posterior. Some theoretical properties of resulting optimization problem are studied and a gradient descent scheme is pr…
The Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) belongs to the class of iterative particle filtering methods and can be used for solving control--to--observable inverse problems. In this context, the EnKF is known as Ensemble Kalman Inversion (EKI). In recent years several continuous limits in the number of iteration and particles have been performed in order to study properties of the method. In particular, a one--dimensional linear stability analysis reveals possible drawbacks in the phase space of moments provided by the continuous limits of the EKI, but observed also in the multi--dimensional setting. I…
