Efficient Adaptive Monte Carlo Uncertainty Forecasting for High Dimensional Nonlinear Dynamic Systems

Abstract

The problem of uncertainty forecasting for complex dynamical systems in the framework of particle methods can be effectively addressed through the solution methodology known as adaptive Monte Carlo (AMC). Monte Carlo (MC) methods involve discretizing the initial probability density function (pdf) followed by forward propagation of particles through system dynamics to obtain an approximate particle representation of the evolved state uncertainty. While simple to implement, MC faces questions surrounding transient statistical consistency and rate of convergence. AMC (adopted here) addresses these issues on-the-fly using defined bounds on estimation accuracy alongside ensemble enrichment routines. This paper presents several improvements in the ensemble enrichment module of AMC. The AMC platform is re-engineered to include the novel implementation of a parallel global stochastic optimization routine in conjunction with additional module enhancements that work together towards the goal of efficient forecasting. Moreover, the efficacy of algorithms utilized within every submodule of AMC are detailed and improved upon under the framework of arithmetic minimization and parallelization. Each submodule is profiled to determine computational bottlenecks, optimized or replaced with more efficient methods such as simulated annealing (SA), and parallelized ultimately leading to a clock time reduction of 200 - 400\% for benchmark entry descent and landing, Lorenz-96, and Lotka-Volterra models.