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Fox, Geoffrey

Publications and source records attributed to Fox, Geoffrey.

Time Series Foundation Models and Deep Learning Architectures for Earthquake Temporal and Spatial Nowcasting

Advancing the capabilities of earthquake nowcasting, the real-time forecasting of seismic activities, remains crucial for reducing casualties. This multifaceted challenge has recently gained attention within the deep learning domain, facilitated by the availability of extensive earthquake datasets. Despite significant advancements, the existing literature on earthquake nowcasting lacks comprehensive evaluations of pre-trained foundation models and modern deep learning architectures; each focuses on a different aspect of data, such as spatial relationships, temporal patterns, and multi-scale dependencies. This paper addresses the mentioned gap by analyzing different architectures and introducing two innovative approaches called Multi Foundation Quake and GNNCoder. We formulate earthquake nowcasting as a time series forecasting problem for the next 14 days within 0.1-degree spatial bins in Southern California. Earthquake time series are generated using the logarithm energy released by quakes, spanning 1986 to 2024. Our comprehensive evaluations demonstrate that our introduced models outperform other custom architectures by effectively capturing temporal-spatial relationships inherent in seismic data. The performance of existing foundation models varies significantly based on the pre-training datasets, emphasizing the need for careful dataset selection. However, we introduce a novel method, Multi Foundation Quake, that achieves the best overall performance by combining a bespoke pattern with Foundation model results handled as auxiliary streams.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

FAIR for AI: An interdisciplinary and international community building perspective

A foundational set of findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles were proposed in 2016 as prerequisites for proper data management and stewardship, with the goal of enabling the reusability of scholarly data. The principles were also meant to apply to other digital assets, at a high level, and over time, the FAIR guiding principles have been re-interpreted or extended to include the software, tools, algorithms, and workflows that produce data. FAIR principles are now being adapted in the context of AI models and datasets. Here, we present the perspectives, vision, and experiences of researchers from different countries, disciplines, and backgrounds who are leading the definition and adoption of FAIR principles in their communities of practice, and discuss outcomes that may result from pursuing and incentivizing FAIR AI research. The material for this report builds on the FAIR for AI Workshop held at Argonne National Laboratory on June 7, 2022.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

In-depth analysis on parallel processing patterns for high-performance Dataframes

The Data Science domain has expanded monumentally in both research and industry communities during the past decade, predominantly owing to the Big Data revolution. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are bringing more complexities to data engineering applications, which are now integrated into data processing pipelines to process terabytes of data. Typically, a significant amount of time is spent on data preprocessing in these pipelines, and hence improving its efficiency directly impacts the overall pipeline performance. The community has recently embraced the concept of Dataframes as the de-facto data structure for data representation and manipulation. However, the most widely used serial Dataframes today (R, pandas) experience performance limitations while working on even moderately large data sets. We believe that there is plenty of room for improvement by taking a look at this problem from a high-performance computing point of view. In a prior publication, we presented a set of parallel processing patterns for distributed dataframe operators and the reference runtime implementation, Cylon. In this paper, we are expanding on the initial concept by introducing a cost model for evaluating the said patterns. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance of Cylon on the ORNL Summit supercomputer.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Benchmarking for AI for Science

AI has been instrumental for recent developments in a number of domains of the sciences. With several hundred machine learning (ML) algorithms and models, and numerous AI-specific hardware platforms, a common quest for all scientists working on AI for Science is around the selection of machine learning algorithm(s) to solve their domain-specific scientific problems. A number of different initiatives around AI Benchmarking have been set up and have been useful in understanding the benefits of different ML algorithms for different tasks.However, with the majority of these AI Benchmarking initiatives focusing on the conventional notions of benchmarking, where the focus is purely runtime performance (such as training time or inference time), their suitability for benchmarking different ML algorithms for solving scientific problems has been viewed as a performance problem even though both are hardly the same. To make reasonable, explainable, and justifiable advancements in science using AI, it is critical to focus on the merits of these algorithms in handling different domain science problems. In other words, more emphasis must be given on Benchmarking for AI for Science than AI Benchmarking. The vision of the former is not only to assess the performance of ML algorithms, but also to assess, and understand the benefits and merits of different ML algorithms in handling scientific problems. Benchmarking for AI for Science, instead of pure performance focused AI Benchmarking, has several benefits: (i) it has the potential to offer advances in the sciences, much more rapidly than through pure performance-based AI methods, (ii) it will encourage the community to focus on developing better domain-specific AI techniques, particularly given the provision for being able to benchmark different techniques, and (iii) it will encourage hardware manufacturers to focus on developing science-specific hardware subsystems.

Thiyagalingam, Jeyan↗

Optimizing Earthquake Nowcasting With Machine Learning: The Role of Strain Hardening in the Earthquake Cycle

Abstract Nowcasting is a term originating from economics, finance, and meteorology. It refers to the process of determining the uncertain state of the economy, markets or the weather at the current time by indirect means. In this paper, we describe a simple two‐parameter data analysis that reveals hidden order in otherwise seemingly chaotic earthquake seismicity. One of these parameters relates to a mechanism of seismic quiescence arising from the physics of strain‐hardening of the crust prior to major events. We observe an earthquake cycle associated with major earthquakes in California, similar to what has long been postulated. An estimate of the earthquake hazard revealed by this state variable time series can be optimized by the use of machine learning in the form of the Receiver Operating Characteristic skill score. The ROC skill is used here as a loss function in a supervised learning mode. Our analysis is conducted in the region of 5° × 5° in latitude‐longitude centered on Los Angeles, a region which we used in previous papers to build similar time series using more involved methods (Rundle & Donnellan, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EA001097 ; Rundle, Donnellan et al., 2021, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EA001757 ; Rundle, Stein et al., 2021, https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6633/abf893 ). Here we show that not only does the state variable time series have forecast skill, the associated spatial probability densities have skill as well. In addition, use of the standard ROC and Precision (PPV) metrics allow probabilities of current earthquake hazard to be defined in a simple, straightforward, and rigorous way.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Scientific machine learning benchmarks

Deep learning has transformed the use of machine learning technologies for the analysis of large experimental datasets. In science, such datasets are typically generated by large-scale experimental facilities, and machine learning focuses on the identification of patterns, trends and anomalies to extract meaningful scientific insights from the data. In upcoming experimental facilities, such as the Extreme Photonics Application Centre (EPAC) in the UK or the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the rate of data generation and the scale of data volumes will increasingly require the use of more automated data analysis. Furthermore, at present, identifying the most appropriate machine learning algorithm for the analysis of any given scientific dataset is a challenge due to the potential applicability of many different machine learning frameworks, computer architectures and machine learning models. Historically, for modelling and simulation on high-performance computing systems, these issues have been addressed through benchmarking computer applications, algorithms and architectures. Extending such a benchmarking approach and identifying metrics for the application of machine learning methods to open, curated scientific datasets is a new challenge for both scientists and computer scientists. Here, we introduce the concept of machine learning benchmarks for science and review existing approaches. As an example, we describe the SciMLBench suite of scientific machine learning benchmarks.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Nowcasting Earthquakes: Imaging the Earthquake Cycle in California With Machine Learning

We propose a new machine learning-based method for nowcasting earthquakes to image the time-dependent earthquake cycle. The result is a timeseries that may correspond to the process of stress accumulation and release. The timeseries are constructed by using principal component analysis of regional seismicity. The patterns are found as eigenvectors of the cross-correlation matrix of a collection of seismicity timeseries in a coarse grained regional spatial grid (pattern recognition via unsupervised machine learning). The eigenvalues of this matrix represent the relative importance of the various eigenpatterns. Using the eigenvectors and eigenvalues, we compute the weighted correlation timeseries of the regional seismicity. This timeseries has the property that the weighted correlation generally decreases prior to major earthquakes in the region, and increases suddenly just after a major earthquake occurs. As in a previous paper, we find that this method produces a nowcasting timeseries that resembles the hypothesized regional stress accumulation and release process characterizing the earthquake cycle. We then address the problem of whether the timeseries contain information regarding future large earthquakes. For this, we compute a receiver operating characteristic and determine the decision thresholds for several future time periods of interest (optimization via supervised machine learning). We find that signals can be detected that can be used to characterize the information content of the timeseries. These signals may be useful in assessing present and near-future seismic hazards.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Deep Learning Approaches to Surrogates for Solving the Diffusion Equation for Mechanistic Real-World Simulations

In many mechanistic medical, biological, physical, and engineered spatiotemporal dynamic models the numerical solution of partial differential equations (PDEs), especially for diffusion, fluid flow and mechanical relaxation, can make simulations impractically slow. Biological models of tissues and organs often require the simultaneous calculation of the spatial variation of concentration of dozens of diffusing chemical species. One clinical example where rapid calculation of a diffusing field is of use is the estimation of oxygen gradients in the retina, based on imaging of the retinal vasculature, to guide surgical interventions in diabetic retinopathy. Furthermore, the ability to predict blood perfusion and oxygenation may one day guide clinical interventions in diverse settings, i.e., from stent placement in treating heart disease to BOLD fMRI interpretation in evaluating cognitive function (Xie et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2020). Since the quasi-steady-state solutions required for fast-diffusing chemical species like oxygen are particularly computationally costly, we consider the use of a neural network to provide an approximate solution to the steady-state diffusion equation. Machine learning surrogates, neural networks trained to provide approximate solutions to such complicated numerical problems, can often provide speed-ups of several orders of magnitude compared to direct calculation. Surrogates of PDEs could enable use of larger and more detailed models than are possible with direct calculation and can make including such simulations in real-time or near-real time workflows practical. Creating a surrogate requires running the direct calculation tens of thousands of times to generate training data and then training the neural network, both of which are computationally expensive. Often the practical applications of such models require thousands to millions of replica simulations, for example for parameter identification and uncertainty quantification, each of which gains speed from surrogate use and rapidly recovers the up-front costs of surrogate generation. We use a Convolutional Neural Network to approximate the stationary solution to the diffusion equation in the case of two equal-diameter, circular, constant-value sources located at random positions in a two-dimensional square domain with absorbing boundary conditions. Such a configuration caricatures the chemical concentration field of a fast-diffusing species like oxygen in a tissue with two parallel blood vessels in a cross section perpendicular to the two blood vessels. To improve convergence during training, we apply a training approach that uses roll-back to reject stochastic changes to the network that increase the loss function. The trained neural network approximation is about 1000 times faster than the direct calculation for individual replicas. Because different applications will have different criteria for acceptable approximation accuracy, we discuss a variety of loss functions and accuracy estimators that can help select the best network for a particular application. We briefly discuss some of the issues we encountered with overfitting, mismapping of the field values and the geometrical conditions that lead to large absolute and relative errors in the approximate solution.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

QuakeSim and the Solid Earth Research Virtual Observatory

We are developing simulation and analysis tools in order to develop a solid Earth science framework for understanding and studying active tectonic and earthquake processes. The goal of QuakeSim and its extension, the Solid Earth Research Virtual Observatory (SERVO), is to study the physics of earthquakes using state-of-the-art modeling, data manipulation, and pattern recognition technologies. We are developing clearly defined accessible data formats and code protocols as inputs to simulations, which are adapted to high-performance computers. The solid Earth system is extremely complex and nonlinear resulting in computationally intensive problems with millions of unknowns. With these tools it will be possible to construct the more complex models and simulations necessary to develop hazard assessment systems critical for reducing future losses from major earthquakes. We are using Web (Grid) service technology to demonstrate the assimilation of multiple distributed data sources (a typical data grid problem) into a major parallel high-performance computing earthquake forecasting code. Such a linkage of Geoinformatics with Geocomplexity demonstrates the value of the Solid Earth Research Virtual Observatory (SERVO) Grid concept, and advances Grid technology by building the first real-time large-scale data assimilation grid.

virtual observatory↗

The QuakeSim Project: Numerical Simulations for Active Tectonic Processes

In order to develop a solid earth science framework for understanding and studying of active tectonic and earthquake processes, this task develops simulation and analysis tools to study the physics of earthquakes using state-of-the art modeling, data manipulation, and pattern recognition technologies. We develop clearly defined accessible data formats and code protocols as inputs to the simulations. these are adapted to high-performance computers because the solid earth system is extremely complex and nonlinear resulting in computationally intensive problems with millions of unknowns. With these tools it will be possible to construct the more complex models and simulations necessary to develop hazard assessment systems critical for reducing future losses from major earthquakes.

tectonic processes↗

Complexity Computational Environment: Data Assimilation SERVOGrid

We are using Web (Grid) service technology to demonstrate the assimilation of multiple distributed data sources (a typical data grid problem) into a major parallel high-performance computing earthquake forecasting code. Such a linkage of Geoinformatics with Geocomplexity demonstrates the value of the Solid Earth Research Virtual Observatory (SERVO) Grid concept, and advance Grid technology by building the first real-time large-scale data assimilation grid Here we develop the next steps for both the SERVO concept and the identified need for a Solid Earth problem-solving environment. We use a challenging motivating problem of importance to NASA namely integrating NASA space geodetic observations with numerical simulations of a changing earth.

data assimiliation↗

Runtime support and compilation methods for user-specified data distributions

This paper describes two new ideas by which an HPF compiler can deal with irregular computations effectively. The first mechanism invokes a user specified mapping procedure via a set of compiler directives. The directives allow use of program arrays to describe graph connectivity, spatial location of array elements, and computational load. The second mechanism is a simple conservative method that in many cases enables a compiler to recognize that it is possible to reuse previously computed information from inspectors (e.g. communication schedules, loop iteration partitions, information that associates off-processor data copies with on-processor buffer locations). We present performance results for these mechanisms from a Fortran 90D compiler implementation.

Ponnusamy, Ravi↗

PC-CUBE: A Personal Computer Based Hypercube

PC-CUBE is an ensemble of IBM PCs or close compatibles connected in the hypercube topology with ordinary computer cables. Communication occurs at the rate of 115.2 K-band via the RS-232 serial links. Available for PC-CUBE is the Crystalline Operating System III (CrOS III), Mercury Operating System, CUBIX and PLOTIX which are parallel I/O and graphics libraries. A CrOS performance monitor was developed to facilitate the measurement of communication and computation time of a program and their effects on performance. Also available are CXLISP, a parallel version of the XLISP interpreter; GRAFIX, some graphics routines for the EGA and CGA; and a general execution profiler for determining execution time spent by program subroutines. PC-CUBE provides a programming environment similar to all hypercube systems running CrOS III, Mercury and CUBIX. In addition, every node (personal computer) has its own graphics display monitor and storage devices. These allow data to be displayed or stored at every processor, which has much instructional value and enables easier debugging of applications. Some application programs which are taken from the book Solving Problems on Concurrent Processors (Fox 88) were implemented with graphics enhancement on PC-CUBE. The applications range from solving the Mandelbrot set, Laplace equation, wave equation, long range force interaction, to WaTor, an ecological simulation.

Ho, Alex↗