In this paper, a new definition of observability is introduced for PDEs. It
is a quantitative measure of partial observability. The quantity is proved to
be consistent if approximated using well posed approximation schemes. A first
order approximation of an unobservability index using empirical gramian is
introduced. For linear systems with full state observability, the empirical
gramian is equivalent to the observability gramian in control theory. The
consistency of the defined observability is exemplified using a Burgers'
equation.Comment: 28 pages, 3 figure
