A visually-informed decision-making platform for model-based design of wind farms

In developing complex engineering systems, model-based design approaches often face critical challenges due to pervasive uncertainties and high computational expense. These challenges could be alleviated to a significant extent though informed modeling decisions, such as model substitution, parameter estimation, localized re-sampling, or grid refinement. Informed modeling decisions therefore necessitate (currently lacking) design frameworks that effectively integrate design automation and human decision-making. In this paper, we seek to address this necessity in the context of designing wind farm layouts, by taking an information flow perspective of this typical model-based design process. Specifically, we develop a visual representation of the uncertainties inherited and generated by models and the inter-model sensitivities. This framework is called the Visually-Informed Decision-Making Platform (VIDMAP) for wind farm design. The eFAST method is used for sensitivity analysis, in order to determine both the first-order and the total-order indices. The uncertainties in the independent inputs are quantified based on their observed variance. The uncertainties generated by the upstream models are quantified through a Monte Carlo simulation followed by probabilistic modeling of (i) the error in the output of the models (if high-fidelity estimates are available), or (ii) the deviation in the outputs estimated by different alternatives/versions of the model. The GUI in VIDMAP is created using value-proportional colors for each model block and inter-model connector, to respectively represent the uncertainty in the model output and the impact (downstream) of the information being relayed by the connector. Wind farm layout optimization (WFLO) serves as an excellent platform to develop and explore VIDMAP, where WFLO is generally performed using low fidelity models, as high-fidelity models (e.g. LES) tend to be computationally prohibitive in this context. The final VIDMAP obtained sheds new light into the sensitivity of wind farm energy estimation on the different models and their associated uncertainties.