Optimal Estimation and Uncertainty Quantification for Stochastic Inverse Problems via Variational Bayesian Methods

Abstract: The Bayesian inversion method demonstrates significant potential for solving inverse problems, enabling both point estimation and uncertainty quantification (UQ). However, Bayesian maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation may become unstable when handling data from diverse distributions (e.g., solutions of stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs)). Additionally, Monte Carlo sampling methods are computationally expensive. To address these challenges, we propose a novel two-stage optimization method based on optimal control theory and variational Bayesian methods. This method not only yields stable solutions for stochastic inverse problems but also efficiently quantifies the uncertainty of solutions. In the first stage, we introduce a new weighting formulation to ensure the stability of the Bayesian MAP estimation. In the second stage, we derive the necessary condition for efficiently quantifying the uncertainty of the solutions by combining the new weighting formula with variational inference. Furthermore, we establish an error estimation theorem that relates the exact solution to the optimally estimated solution under different amounts of observed data. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated through numerical examples.