Empirical estimation of school siting parameter towards improving children's safety

Towards Practical Bayesian Parameter and State Estimation

Joint state and parameter estimation is a core problem for dynamic Bayesian networks. Although modern probabilistic inference toolkits make it relatively easy to specify large and practically relevant probabilistic models, the silver bullet—an efficient and general online inference algorithm for such problems—remains elusive, forcing users to write special-purpose code for each application. We ...

Children’s Health: School Siting Poses Particulate Problem

Empirical Distributions in Least Squares Estimation for Distributed Parameter Systems

We consider the estimation of error distributions in least squares identiication of distributed parameter systems. Asymptotic properties of approximate error sequences are developed. In particular, we examine consistency and asymptotic normality of empirical estimates of the error distribution. The consistency obtained is analogous to the Glivenko-Cantelli theorem. For asymptotic normality, we ...

Improving Convergence of Derivative-Based Parameter Estimation with Multi-Start Parameter Clustering Based on DAE Decomposition

Derivative-based optimization methods for parameter estimation require good start values in order to converge to the global optimum. A conventional multistart strategy is often not practical for identifying such start values, especially for high dimensional problems. Moreover, the computational efforts for each iteration of the optimizer are significantly increased by the computation of paramet...

School Siting Near Industrial Chemical Facilities: Findings from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s Investigation of the West Fertilizer Explosion

BACKGROUND The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) investigated the 17 April 2013 explosion at the West Fertilizer Company (WFC) that resulted in 15 fatalities, more than 260 injuries, and damage to more than 150 buildings. Among these structures were four nearby school buildings cumulatively housing children in grades kindergarten-12, a nursing care facility, and an apart...