On dimension reduction in Gaussian filters

A priori dimension reduction is a widely adopted technique for reducing the computational complexity of stationary inverse problems. In this setting, the solution of an inverse problem is parameterized by a low-dimensional basis that is often obtained from the truncated Karhunen-Loeve expansion of the prior distribution. For high-dimensional inverse problems equipped with smoothing priors, this technique can lead to drastic reductions in parameter dimension and significant computational savings. In this paper, we extend the concept of a priori dimension reduction to non-stationary inverse problems, in which the goal is to sequentially infer the state of a dynamical system. Our approach proceeds in an offline-online fashion. We first identify a low-dimensional subspace in the state space before solving the inverse problem (the offline phase), using either the method of "snapshots" or regularized covariance estimation. Then this subspace is used to reduce the computational complexity of various filtering algorithms - including the Kalman filter, extended Kalman filter, and ensemble Kalman filter - within a novel subspace-constrained Bayesian prediction-and-update procedure (the online phase). We demonstrate the performance of our new dimension reduction approach on various numerical examples. In some test cases, our approach reduces the dimensionality of the original problem by orders of magnitude and yields up to two orders of magnitude in computational savings

Optimal low-rank approximations of Bayesian linear inverse problems

In the Bayesian approach to inverse problems, data are often informative, relative to the prior, only on a low-dimensional subspace of the parameter space. Significant computational savings can be achieved by using this subspace to characterize and approximate the posterior distribution of the parameters. We first investigate approximation of the posterior covariance matrix as a low-rank update of the prior covariance matrix. We prove optimality of a particular update, based on the leading eigendirections of the matrix pencil defined by the Hessian of the negative log-likelihood and the prior precision, for a broad class of loss functions. This class includes the F\"{o}rstner metric for symmetric positive definite matrices, as well as the Kullback-Leibler divergence and the Hellinger distance between the associated distributions. We also propose two fast approximations of the posterior mean and prove their optimality with respect to a weighted Bayes risk under squared-error loss. These approximations are deployed in an offline-online manner, where a more costly but data-independent offline calculation is followed by fast online evaluations. As a result, these approximations are particularly useful when repeated posterior mean evaluations are required for multiple data sets. We demonstrate our theoretical results with several numerical examples, including high-dimensional X-ray tomography and an inverse heat conduction problem. In both of these examples, the intrinsic low-dimensional structure of the inference problem can be exploited while producing results that are essentially indistinguishable from solutions computed in the full space

Computational methods for large-scale inverse problems:a survey on hybrid projection methods

This paper surveys animportant class of methods that combine iterative projection methods and variational regularization methods for large-scale inverse problems. Iterative methods such as Krylov subspace methods are invaluable in the numerical linear algebra community and have proved important in solving inverse problems due to their inherent regularizing properties and their ability to handle large-scale problems. Variational regularization describes abroad and important class of methods that are used to obtain reliable solutions to inverse problems, whereby one solves a modified problem that incorporates prior knowledge. Hybrid projection methods combine iterative projection methods with variational regularization techniques in a synergistic way, providing researchers with a powerful computational framework for solving very large inverse problems. Although the idea of a hybrid Krylov method for linear inverse problems goes back to the 1980s, several recent advances on new regularization frameworks and methodologies have made this field ripe for extensions, further analyses, and new applications. In this paper, we provide a practical and accessible introduction to hybrid projection methods in the context of solving large (linear) inverse problems

Computational methods for large-scale inverse problems:a survey on hybrid projection methods

This paper surveys animportant class of methods that combine iterative projection methods and variational regularization methods for large-scale inverse problems. Iterative methods such as Krylov subspace methods are invaluable in the numerical linear algebra community and have proved important in solving inverse problems due to their inherent regularizing properties and their ability to handle large-scale problems. Variational regularization describes abroad and important class of methods that are used to obtain reliable solutions to inverse problems, whereby one solves a modified problem that incorporates prior knowledge. Hybrid projection methods combine iterative projection methods with variational regularization techniques in a synergistic way, providing researchers with a powerful computational framework for solving very large inverse problems. Although the idea of a hybrid Krylov method for linear inverse problems goes back to the 1980s, several recent advances on new regularization frameworks and methodologies have made this field ripe for extensions, further analyses, and new applications. In this paper, we provide a practical and accessible introduction to hybrid projection methods in the context of solving large (linear) inverse problems

Enabling and interpreting hyper-differential sensitivity analysis for Bayesian inverse problems

Inverse problems constrained by partial differential equations (PDEs) play a critical role in model development and calibration. In many applications, there are multiple uncertain parameters in a model which must be estimated. Although the Bayesian formulation is attractive for such problems, computational cost and high dimensionality frequently prohibit a thorough exploration of the parametric uncertainty. A common approach is to reduce the dimension by fixing some parameters (which we will call auxiliary parameters) to a best estimate and using techniques from PDE-constrained optimization to approximate properties of the Bayesian posterior distribution. For instance, the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) and the Laplace approximation of the posterior covariance can be computed. In this article, we propose using hyper-differential sensitivity analysis (HDSA) to assess the sensitivity of the MAP point to changes in the auxiliary parameters. We establish an interpretation of HDSA as correlations in the posterior distribution. Foundational assumptions for HDSA require satisfaction of the optimality conditions which are not always feasible or appropriate as a result of ill-posedness in the inverse problem. We introduce novel theoretical and computational approaches to justify and enable HDSA for ill-posed inverse problems by projecting the sensitivities on likelihood informed subspaces and defining a posteriori updates. Our proposed framework is demonstrated on a nonlinear multi-physics inverse problem motivated by estimation of spatially heterogenous material properties in the presence of spatially distributed parametric modeling uncertainties.Comment: 31 page