Abstract: The impossibility of observing the states of distributed parameter systems over the entire spatial domain raises the question of where to locate measurement sensors so as to estimate the unknown system parameters as accurately as possible. Both researchers and practitioners do not doubt that making use of sensors placed in an ​‘intelligent’ manner may lead to dramatic gains in the achievable accuracy of the parameter estimates, so efficient sensor location strategies are highly desirable. In turn, the complexity of the sensor location problem implies that the assortment of sensor placement methods that would be readily applicable to practical situations is very limited. What is more, they are not well known among researchers.

The aim of the talk is to give account of both classical and recent original work on optimal sensor placement strategies for parameter identification in dynamic distributed systems modeled by partial differential equations. The reported work constitutes an attempt to meet the needs created by practical applications, especially regarding environmental processes, through the development of new techniques and algorithms or adopting methods which have been successful in akin fields of optimal control and optimum experimental design. While planning, real-valued functions of the Fisher information matrix of parameters are primarily employed as the performance indices to be minimized with respect to the sensor positions. Particular emphasis is placed on determining the ​‘best’ way to guide moving and scanning sensors, and making the solutions independent of the parameters to be identified.

The talk will be complemented by more advanced topics including the related problem of optimum input design and the Bayesian approach to deal with the ill-posedness of parameter estimation.

Bio: Dariusz Uciński is a full professor at the University of Zielona Góra, Poland. He studied electrical engineering at the Higher College of Engineering in Zielona Góra, and received Ph.D. and a D.Sc. degrees in automatic control and robotics from the Technical University of Wrocław.