ENRE presents - Developing New Optimization Algorithms and Applying them to Difficult Multimodal Env

When:  Nov 21, 2023 from 10:00 to 11:00 (ET)

Many environmental problems are difficult to analyze because the a) models describing them may have many parameters to calibrate or decisions to make and the resulting functions are not convex and b) the objective function is often  a simulation model that is expensive (minutes or hours) for each evaluation.  This seminar will focus on  Prof. Shoemaker’s recent research using  RBF surrogate global optimization of expensive multimodal functions  and its  application to environmental model calibration or decision making. The algorithms (serial or parallel)  are general purpose and can be used on expensive, multimodal objective functions  (including for simulation optimization unrelated to the environment). Her earlier research (on groundwater, acid rain, and pesticide reduction)  and her international organizational efforts to protect groundwater from pollution will also be discussed briefly.