Integrating hyper-parameter uncertainties in a multi-fidelity Bayesian model for the estimation of a probability of failure

Abstract

A multi-fidelity simulator is a numerical model, in which one of the inputs controls a trade-off between the realism and the computational cost of the simulation. Our goal is to estimate the probability of exceeding a given threshold on a multi-fidelity stochastic simulator. We propose a fully Bayesian approach based on Gaussian processes to compute the posterior probability distribution of this probability. We pay special attention to the hyper-parameters of the model. Our methodology is illustrated on an academic example.