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Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) is key to assisting appraisal of the behavior of hydrological systems through model diagnosis considering multiple sources of uncertainty. Uncertainty sources typically comprise incomplete knowledge in (a) conceptual and mathematical formulation of models and (b) parameters embedded in the models. In this context, there is the need for detailed investigations aimed at a robust quantification of the importance of model and parameter uncertainties in a rigorous multi‐model context. This study aims at evaluating and comparing two modern multi‐model GSA methodologies. These are the first GSA approaches embedding both model and parameter uncertainty sources and encompass the variance‐based framework based on Sobol indices (as derived by Dai & Ye, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.06.034) and the moment‐based approach upon which the formulation of the multi‐model AMA indices (as derived by Dell'Oca et al., 2020, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019wr025754) is based. We provide an assessment of various aspects of sensitivity upon considering a joint analysis of these two approaches in a multi‐model context. Our work relies on well‐established scenarios that comprise (a) a synthetic setting related to reactive transport across a groundwater system and (b) an experimentally‐based study considering heavy metal sorption onto a soil. Our study documents that the joint use of these GSA approaches can provide different while complementary information to assess mutual consistency of approaches and to enrich the information content provided by GSA under model and parameter uncertainty. While being related to groundwater settings, our results can be considered as reference for future GSA studies coping with model and parameter uncertainty. Key Points Two modern multi‐model Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) approaches are evaluated and compared upon considering two groundwater‐related scenarios The results of the two multi‐model GSA methods can be markedly different due to their differing theoretical bases Joint use of the two GSA methods enhances one's ability for model diagnosis and assessment of system behaviors

Power systems are increasingly affected by various sources of uncertainty at all levels. The investigation of their effects thus becomes a critical challenge for their design and operation. Sensitivity Analysis (SA) can be instrumental for understanding the origins of system uncertainty, hence allowing for a robust and informed decision-making process under uncertainty. The SA value as a support tool for model-based inference is acknowledged; however, its potential is not fully realized yet within the power system community. This is due to an improper use of long-established SA practices, which sometimes prevent an in-depth model sensitivity investigation, as well as to partial communication between the SA community and the final users, ultimately hindering non-specialists’ awareness of the existence of effective strategies to tackle their own research questions. This paper aims at bridging the gap between SA and power systems via a threefold contribution: (i) a bibliometric study of the state-of-the-art SA to identify common practices in the power system modeling community; (ii) a getting started overview of the most widespread SA methods to support the SA user in the selection of the fittest SA method for a given power system application; (iii) a user-oriented general workflow to illustrate the implementation of SA best practices via a simple technical example.

In the process of parameter identification, sensitivity analysis is mainly used to determine key parameters with high sensitivity in the model. Sensitivity analysis methods include local sensitivity analysis (LSA) and global sensitivity analysis (GSA). The LSA method has been widely used for power system parameter identification for a long time, while the GSA has started to be used in recent years. However, there is no clear conclusion on the impact of different sensitivity analysis methods on parameter identification results. Therefore, this paper compares and studies the roles that LSA and GSA can play in different parameter identification methods, providing clear guidance for the selection of sensitivity analysis methods and parameter identification methods. The conclusion is as follows. If the identification strategy that only identifies key parameters with high sensitivity is adopted, we recommend still using the existing LSA method. If using a groupwise alternating identification strategy (GAIS) for high- and low-sensitivity parameters, either LSA or GSA can be used. To improve the identification accuracy, it is more important to improve the identification strategy than to change the sensitivity analysis method. When the accuracy of the non-key parameters with low sensitivity cannot be confirmed, using the GAIS is an effective method for ensuring identification accuracy. In addition, it should be noted that the high sensitivity of a parameter does not necessarily mean that the parameter is identifiable, which is revealed by the examples used in this paper.

An accurate and objective evaluation of the carbon footprint of rice production is crucial for mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from global food production. Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis of the carbon footprint evaluation model can help improve the efficiency and credibility of the evaluation. In this study, we combined a farm-scaled model consisting of widely used carbon footprint evaluation methods with a typical East Asian rice production system comprising two fertilization strategies. Furthermore, we used Morris and Sobol’ global sensitivity analysis methods to evaluate the sensitivity and uncertainty of the carbon footprint model. Results showed that the carbon footprint evaluation model exhibits a certain nonlinearity, and it is the most sensitive to model parameters related to CH 4 emission estimation, including EF c (baseline emission factor for continuously flooded fields without organic amendments), SF w (scaling factor to account for the differences in water regime during the cultivation period), and t (cultivation period of rice), but is not sensitive to activity data and its emission factors. The main sensitivity parameters of the model obtained using the two global sensitivity methods were essentially identical. Uncertainty analysis showed that the carbon footprint of organic rice production was 1271.7 ± 388.5 kg CO 2 eq t –1 year –1 (95% confidence interval was 663.9–2175.8 kg CO 2 eq t –1 year –1 ), which was significantly higher than that of conventional rice production (926.0 ± 213.6 kg CO 2 eq t –1 year –1 , 95% confidence interval 582.5-1429.7 kg CO 2 eq t –1 year –1 ) ( p <0.0001). The carbon footprint for organic rice had a wider range and greater uncertainty, mainly due to the greater impact of CH 4 emissions (79.8% for organic rice versus 53.8% for conventional rice). EF c , t , Y , and SF w contributed the most to the uncertainty of carbon footprint of the two rice production modes, wherein their correlation coefficients were between 0.34 and 0.55 ( p <0.01). The analytical framework presented in this study provides insights into future on-farm advice related to GHG mitigation of rice production.

The most general quantities of interest (called “responses”) produced by the computational model of a linear physical system can depend on both the forward and adjoint state functions that describe the respective system. This work presents the Fourth-Order Comprehensive Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis Methodology (4th-CASAM) for linear systems, which enables the efficient computation of the exact expressions of the 1st-, 2nd-, 3rd- and 4th-order sensitivities of a generic system response, which can depend on both the forward and adjoint state functions, with respect to all of the parameters underlying the respective forward/adjoint systems. Among the best known such system responses are various Lagrangians, including the Schwinger and Roussopoulos functionals, for analyzing ratios of reaction rates, the Rayleigh quotient for analyzing eigenvalues and/or separation constants, etc., which require the simultaneous consideration of both the forward and adjoint systems when computing them and/or their sensitivities (i.e., functional derivatives) with respect to the model parameters. Evidently, such responses encompass, as particular cases, responses that may depend just on the forward or just on the adjoint state functions pertaining to the linear system under consideration. This work also compares the CPU-times needed by the 4th-CASAM versus other deterministic methods (e.g., finite-difference schemes) for computing response sensitivities These comparisons underscore the fact that the 4th-CASAM is the only practically implementable methodology for obtaining and subsequently computing the exact expressions (i.e., free of methodologically-introduced approximations) of the 1st-, 2nd, 3rd- and 4th-order sensitivities (i.e., functional derivatives) of responses to system parameters, for coupled forward/adjoint linear systems. By enabling the practical computation of any and all of the 1st-, 2nd, 3rd- and 4th-order response sensitivities to model parameters, the 4th-CASAM makes it possible to compare the relative values of the sensitivities of various order, in order to assess which sensitivities are important and which may actually be neglected, thus enabling future investigations of the convergence of the (multivariate) Taylor series expansion of the response in terms of parameter variations, as well as investigating the range of validity of other important quantities (e.g., response variances/covariance, skewness, kurtosis, etc.) that are derived from Taylor-expansion of the response as a function of the model’s parameters. The 4th-CASAM presented in this work provides the basis for significant future advances towards overcoming the “curse of dimensionality” in sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification and predictive modeling.

The exposure to uranium (U) in the natural environment is primarily through ingestion (eating contaminated food and drinking water) and dermal (skin contact with U powders/wastes) pathways. This study focuses on the dose assessment for different age-groups using the USEPA model. A total of 156 drinking water samples were tested to know U level in the groundwater of the study region. Different age-groups were selected to determine the human health impact due to uranium exposure in the residing populations. To determine the relative importance of each input, a variance decomposition technique, i.e., Sobol sensitivity analysis, was used. Furthermore, different sample sizes were tested to obtain the optimal Sobol sensitivity indices. Three types of effects were evaluated: first-order effect (FOE), second-order effect (SOE) and total effect. The result of analysis revealed that 17% of the samples had U concentration above 30 µg l−1 of U, which is the recommended level by World Health Organization. The mean hazard index (HI) value for younger age-group was found to be less than 1, whereas the 95th percentile value of HI value exceeded for both age-groups. The mean annual effective dose of U for adults was found to be slightly higher than the recommended level of 0.1 m Sv year−1. This result signified that adults experienced relatively higher exposure dose than the children in this region. Sobol sensitivity analysis of FOE showed that the concentration of uranium (Cw) is the most sensitive input followed by intake rate (IR) and exposure frequency. Moreover, the value of SOE revealed that interaction effect of Cw − IR is the most sensitive input parameter for the assessment of oral health risk. On the other hand, dermal model showed Cw − F as the most sensitive interaction input. The larger value of SOE was also recorded for older age-group than for the younger group.

As the level of greenhouse gas emissions increases, so does the importance of the energy performance of buildings (EPB). One of the main factors to measure EPB is a structure’s heating load (HL) and cooling load (CL). HLs and CLs depend on several variables, such as relative compactness, surface area, wall area, roof area, overall height, orientation, glazing area, and glazing area distribution. This research uses deep neural networks (DNNs) to forecast HLs and CLs for a variety of structures. The DNNs explored in this research include multi-layer perceptron (MLP) networks, and each of the models in this research was developed through extensive testing with a myriad number of layers, process elements, and other data preprocessing techniques. As a result, a DNN is shown to be an improvement for modeling HLs and CLs compared to traditional artificial neural network (ANN) models. In order to extract knowledge from a trained model, a post-processing technique, called sensitivity analysis (SA), was applied to the model that performed the best with respect to the selected goodness-of-fit metric on an independent set of testing data. There are two forms of SA—local and global methods—but both have the same purpose in terms of determining the significance of independent variables within a model. Local SA assumes inputs are independent of each other, while global SA does not. To further the contribution of the research presented within this article, the results of a global SA, called state-based sensitivity analysis (SBSA), are compared to the results obtained from a traditional local technique, called sensitivity analysis about the mean (SAAM). The results of the research demonstrate an improvement over existing conclusions found in literature, which is of particular interest to decision-makers and designers of building structures.

Sensitivity analysis of hydrological model parameters is a crucial step in the calibration process of hydrological simulation. In this paper, the improved Morris method with the double-Latin hypercube sampling is proposed for global sensitivity analysis of 10 parameters of the Xin'anjiang model. In addition, the local sensitivity is analyzed based on the rate validation of the model parameters. In general, the results show those parameters about evaporation coefficient in the deep layer (C), free water storage capacity (SM), impervious area as a percentage of total watershed area (IMP), free water storage capacity curve index (EX), groundwater outflow coefficient (KG) and subsurface runoff abatement factor (KKG) are all less than 0.01, insensitive parameters; the parameters about evaporation conversion factor (K) and square times of the storage capacity curve(B) are in the range of [0.01, 0.1], less sensitive parameters; the parameter for flow out coefficient in soil (KSS) is in the range of [0.1, 0.2], a low-sensitivity parameter; the parameter abatement coefficient of mid-soil flow (KKSS) is greater than 1, a high-sensitivity parameter; the improved Morris method better reflects the existence of interactions between parameters. This research result provides a new technical approach for the sensitivity analysis of hydrological model parameters.

This study aimed to design a linear feedback control approach for a parametrically excited energy harvesting system utilizing a piezoelectric material as the transduction element. The purpose was to significantly increase the amount of energy produced compared to that produced by the original system. To do so, firstly, it is necessary to analyze the stability of the system and perform a global sensitivity analysis to determine the physical parameters of the system that most contribute to energy production. The sensitivity analysis is done by calculating the Sobol indices, which are statistical indices that measure the relative contribution of each input variable (in this case, the physical parameters of the system) to the contribution of all input variables. In the stability analysis, the state transition matrix approximation techniques created by Sinha and Butcher and the results of the Floquet Theory for periodic systems were used. Stability analysis and global sensitivity analysis are methodologically complementary techniques for a better understanding of the dynamics of a system. In the case of this work, they are applied to an energy-harvesting system based on mechanical vibrations, providing important information to design a more efficient controller. The control technique used was proposed by Sinha and Butcher (1997), and is known as Linear Feedback Controller Design via the Lyapunov-Floquet Transform.

Sensitivity analysis (SA) intends to identify the key meteorological variables that affect the performance of reference crop evapotranspiration (ET0) models. It is of importance in assessing the variability of meteorological variables and ET0, especially in the face of increasing climate uncertainties. However, the surging of inconsistencies resulting from global changes in meteorological conditions due to climate change have impacted the ET0 model estimation in different regions, with detrimental effects on water resources and crop production. Therefore, efficient SA is necessary to evaluate the impact of changes in meteorological variables that influence ET0 model estimation. This mini review analyses the various SA methods applied in the field of ET0, based on a comprehensive and comparative analysis of existing SA methods from all around the world. The study discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each SA method, as well as the factors affecting the SA of ET0. The study also provides future prospects that may contribute to more solid and powerful analysis for ET0 model estimations and conclusions.