MetaPhysiCa: OOD Robustness in Physics-informed Machine Learning

S Chandra Mouli, Muhammad Alam, Bruno Ribeiro

Keywords: physics-informed machine learning, out-of-distribution, robustness, causality

TL;DR: This work proposes combining causal structural discovery and meta-learning in order to make Physics-informed Machine Learning robust to OOD tasks.

Abstract: A fundamental challenge in physics-informed machine learning (PIML) is the design of robust PIML methods for out-of-distribution (OOD) forecasting tasks. These OOD tasks require learning-to-learn from observations of the same (ODE) dynamical system with different unknown ODE parameters, and demand accurate forecasts even under out-of-support initial conditions and out-of-support ODE parameters. We propose a solution for such tasks, defined as a meta-learning procedure for causal structure discovery. In 3 different OOD tasks, we show that the proposed approach outperforms existing PIML and deep learning methods.