Parameter Estimation : Towards Data-Driven and Privacy Preserving Approaches

Abstract: Parameter estimation is a pivotal task across various domains such as system identification, statistics, and machine learning. The literature presents numerous estimation procedures, many of which are backed by well-studied asymptotic properties. In the contemporary landscape, highly advanced digital twins (DTs) offer the capability to faithfully replicate real systems through proper tuning. Leveraging these DTs, data-driven estimators can alleviate challenges inherent in traditional methods, notably their computational cost and sensitivity to initializations. Furthermore, traditional estimators often rely on sensitive data, necessitating protective measures.In this thesis, we consider data-driven and privacy-preserving approaches to parameter estimation that overcome many of these challenges.The first part of the thesis delves into an exploration of modern data-driven estimation techniques, focusing on the two-stage (TS) approach. Operating under the paradigm of inverse supervised learning, the TS approach simulates numerous samples across parameter variations and employs supervised learning methods to predict parameter values. Divided into two stages, the approach involves compressing data into a smaller set of samples and the second stage utilizes these samples to predict parameter values. The simplicity of the TS estimator underscores its interpretability, necessitating theoretical justification, which forms the core motivation for this thesis. We establish statistical frameworks for the TS estimator, yielding its Bayes and minimax versions, alongside developing an improved minimax TS variant that excels in computational efficiency and robustness to distributional shifts. Finally, we conduct an asymptotic analysis of the TS estimator.The second part of the thesis introduces an application of data-driven estimation methods, that includes the TS and neural network based approaches, in the design of tuning rules for PI controllers. Leveraging synthetic datasets generated from DTs, we train machine learning algorithms to meta-learn tuning rules, streamlining the calibration process without manual intervention.In the final part of the thesis, we tackle scenarios where estimation procedures must handle sensitive data. Here, we introduce differential privacy constraints into the Bayes point estimation problem to protect sensitive information. Proposing a unified approach, we integrate the estimation problem and differential privacy constraints into a single convex optimization objective, thereby optimizing the accuracy-privacy trade-off. In cases where both observations and parameter spaces are finite, this approach reduces to a tractable linear program which is solvable using off-the-shelf solvers.In essence, this thesis endeavors to address computational and privacy concerns within the realm of parameter estimation.