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Inferring Atmospheric Release Characteristics in a Large Computer Experiment using Bayesian Adaptive Splines

Journal Article · · Journal of the American Statistical Association
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [4]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  2. Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States)
  3. Climate Corporation, San Francisco, CA (United States)
  4. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

An atmospheric release of hazardous material, whether accidental or intentional, can be catastrophic for those in the path of the plume. Predicting the path of a plume based on characteristics of the release (location, amount and duration) and meteorological conditions is an active research area highly relevant for emergency and long-term response to these releases. As a result, researchers have developed particle dispersion simulators to provide plume path predictions that incorporate release characteristics and meteorological conditions. However, since release characteristics and meteorological conditions are often unknown, the inverse problem is of great interest, that is, based on all the observations of the plume so far, what can be inferred about the release characteristics? This is the question we seek to answer using plume observations from a controlled release at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in Central California. With access to a large number of evaluations of a computationally expensive particle dispersion simulator that includes continuous and categorical inputs and spatio-temporal output, building a fast statistical surrogate model (or emulator) presents many statistical challenges, but is an essential tool for inverse modeling and sensitivity analysis. We achieve accurate emulation using Bayesian adaptive splines to model weights on empirical orthogonal functions. Here, we use this emulator as well as appropriately identifiable simulator discrepancy and observational error models to calibrate the simulator, thus finding a posterior distribution of characteristics of the release. Since the release was controlled, these characteristics are known, making it possible to compare our findings to the truth.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
89233218CNA000001; AC52-07NA27344
OSTI ID:
1494474
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1822600
Report Number(s):
LA-UR--18-21836; LLNL-JRNL--732282
Journal Information:
Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal Name: Journal of the American Statistical Association Journal Issue: 528 Vol. 114; ISSN 0162-1459
Publisher:
Taylor & FrancisCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
atmospheric dispersion models
categorical inputs
functional outputs
inverse problem
model calibration
multivariate emulation
sensitivity analysis
uncertainty quantification