19,072 research outputs found
Dynamical indicators for the prediction of bursting phenomena in high-dimensional systems
Drawing upon the bursting mechanism in slow-fast systems, we propose
indicators for the prediction of such rare extreme events which do not require
a priori known slow and fast coordinates. The indicators are associated with
functionals defined in terms of Optimally Time Dependent (OTD) modes. One such
functional has the form of the largest eigenvalue of the symmetric part of the
linearized dynamics reduced to these modes. In contrast to other choices of
subspaces, the proposed modes are flow invariant and therefore a projection
onto them is dynamically meaningful. We illustrate the application of these
indicators on three examples: a prototype low-dimensional model, a body forced
turbulent fluid flow, and a unidirectional model of nonlinear water waves. We
use Bayesian statistics to quantify the predictive power of the proposed
indicators
"Last-Mile" preparation for a potential disaster
Extreme natural events, like e.g. tsunamis or earthquakes, regularly lead to catastrophes with dramatic consequences. In recent years natural disasters caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, destruction of infrastructure, disruption of economic activity and loss of billions of dollars worth of property and thus revealed considerable deficits hindering their effective management: Needs for stakeholders, decision-makers as well as for persons concerned include systematic risk identification and evaluation, a way to assess countermeasures, awareness raising and decision support systems to be employed before, during and after crisis situations. The overall goal of this study focuses on interdisciplinary integration of various scientific disciplines to contribute to a tsunami early warning information system. In comparison to most studies our focus is on high-end geometric and thematic analysis to meet the requirements of small-scale, heterogeneous and complex coastal urban systems. Data, methods and results from engineering, remote sensing and social sciences are interlinked and provide comprehensive information for disaster risk assessment, management and reduction. In detail, we combine inundation modeling, urban morphology analysis, population assessment, socio-economic analysis of the population and evacuation modeling. The interdisciplinary results eventually lead to recommendations for mitigation strategies in the fields of spatial planning or coping capacity
Co-Localization of Audio Sources in Images Using Binaural Features and Locally-Linear Regression
This paper addresses the problem of localizing audio sources using binaural
measurements. We propose a supervised formulation that simultaneously localizes
multiple sources at different locations. The approach is intrinsically
efficient because, contrary to prior work, it relies neither on source
separation, nor on monaural segregation. The method starts with a training
stage that establishes a locally-linear Gaussian regression model between the
directional coordinates of all the sources and the auditory features extracted
from binaural measurements. While fixed-length wide-spectrum sounds (white
noise) are used for training to reliably estimate the model parameters, we show
that the testing (localization) can be extended to variable-length
sparse-spectrum sounds (such as speech), thus enabling a wide range of
realistic applications. Indeed, we demonstrate that the method can be used for
audio-visual fusion, namely to map speech signals onto images and hence to
spatially align the audio and visual modalities, thus enabling to discriminate
between speaking and non-speaking faces. We release a novel corpus of real-room
recordings that allow quantitative evaluation of the co-localization method in
the presence of one or two sound sources. Experiments demonstrate increased
accuracy and speed relative to several state-of-the-art methods.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
Refraction of a Gaussian Seaway
Refraction of a Longuet-Higgins Gaussian sea by random ocean currents creates
persistent local variations in average energy and wave action. These variations
take the form of lumps or streaks, and they explicitly survive dispersion over
wavelength and incoming wave propagation direction. Thus, the uniform sampling
assumed in the venerable Longuet-Higgins theory does not apply following
refraction by random currents. Proper handling of the non-uniform sampling
results in greatly increased probability of freak wave formation. The present
theory represents a synthesis of Longuet-Higgins Gaussian seas and the
refraction model of White and Fornberg, which considered the effect of currents
on a plane wave incident seaway. Using the linearized equations for deep ocean
waves, we obtain quantitative predictions for the increased probability of
freak wave formation when the refractive effects are taken into account. The
crest height or wave height distribution depends primarily on the ``freak
index", gamma, which measures the strength of refraction relative to the
angular spread of the incoming sea. Dramatic effects are obtained in the tail
of this distribution even for the modest values of the freak index that are
expected to occur commonly in nature. Extensive comparisons are made between
the analytical description and numerical simulations.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure
Modeling Non-Stationary Processes Through Dimension Expansion
In this paper, we propose a novel approach to modeling nonstationary spatial
fields. The proposed method works by expanding the geographic plane over which
these processes evolve into higher dimensional spaces, transforming and
clarifying complex patterns in the physical plane. By combining aspects of
multi-dimensional scaling, group lasso, and latent variables models, a
dimensionally sparse projection is found in which the originally nonstationary
field exhibits stationarity. Following a comparison with existing methods in a
simulated environment, dimension expansion is studied on a classic test-bed
data set historically used to study nonstationary models. Following this, we
explore the use of dimension expansion in modeling air pollution in the United
Kingdom, a process known to be strongly influenced by rural/urban effects,
amongst others, which gives rise to a nonstationary field
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