Knowledge Distillation with Error-correcting Transfer Learning for Wind Power Prediction
Dr. Hao Chen
Assistant Professor, IEBIS Department, University of Twente.
Wind power prediction, especially for turbines, is vital for the operation, controllability, and economy of electricity companies. Hybrid methodologies combining advanced data science with weather forecasting have been incrementally applied to the predictions. Nevertheless, individually modeling massive turbines from scratch and downscaling weather forecasts to turbine size are neither easy nor economical. Aiming at the above, this research proposes a novel framework with mathematical underpinnings for turbine power prediction. This framework is the first time to incorporate knowledge distillation into energy forecasting, enabling accurate and economical construction of turbine models by learning knowledge from the well-established park model. Besides, park-scale weather forecasts are non-explicitly mapped to turbines by transfer learning of predicted power errors, achieving model correction for better performance. The proposed framework is deployed on five turbines featuring various terrains in an Arctic wind park. The results are evaluated against the competitors of ablation investigation. The major findings reveal that the proposed framework, developed on favorable knowledge distillation and transfer learning parameters tuning, yields performance boosts of 3.3 % - 23.9 % over its competitors. This advantage remain exists in terms of wind energy physics and computing efficiency, which are verified by the prediction quality rate and calculation time.
Hao recently started work as an assistant professor in AI and sustainable industries at IEBIS. His current research interest is how to innovatively develop and deploy emerging AI technologies and mathematical methods for the unique physical principles and economic mechanisms of sustainable industries, especially for future energy and environment systems, to combat climate change.
Evaluating Tactical Blueprints for Operating Room Planning
Dr. Sebatian Rachuba
Assistant Professor, IEBIS Department, University of Twente.
This talks discusses the use of simulation to support decision-makers in order to efficiently utilise limited resources in hospitals. We focus on allocating available capacity in the operating room (OR) and the intensive care unit (ICU) which are highly inter-dependent; their planning is further complicated by stochastic demand in terms of surgery duration and subsequent length of stay. Tactical blueprints are an effective tool to support planners handle those complicating factors by focusing on a long-term target number of surgeries. With such blueprints as an input, the simulation model evaluates the impact of guidelines on surgery volume as well as the utilisation of OR and ICU. Computational studies show that continually applying such templates as admission guidelines leads to a well-utilised OR and efficiently used ICUs. We highlight lessons learned from past collaborations with care providers and discuss interesting avenues for future research.
Sebastian Rachuba joined the University of Twente in February 2023 as an Assistant Professor of Healthcare Operations Research. He holds a PhD in Management and Economics from Ruhr University Bochum (Germany) and spent his postdoc time at Municipal Hospital Solingen (Germany) and University of Exeter Medical School (United Kingdom). Subsequently, he worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Wuppertal (Germany). His research focuses on improving healthcare by supporting complex planning decisions and evaluating their impact on management, patients, staff, and the wider society. He applies optimisation and simulation models as well as interactive combinations of both. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter Medical School (United Kingdom) and holds an Associate Research Fellowship with the Higher Education Academy (United Kingdom). Sebastian also serves as the IFORS Representative of the German Society for Operations Research. He is also Area Editor for the Health Systems Journal and member of the Editorial Board of Operations Research for Health Care.