Project

A Unified Framework for Rare-Event Simulation and Bayesian Algorithms

Code
bof/baf/4y/2026/01/010
Duration
01 January 2026 → 31 December 2027
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Research disciplines
  • Natural sciences
    • Computational statistics
  • Engineering and technology
    • Modelling and simulation
Keywords
Bayesian inference probability computer simulation
 
Project description

We investigate the two-way connection between rare-event simulation and Bayesian computation. Rare-event techniques (such as importance sampling, splitting, and cross entropy) offer powerful tools for exploring low-probability regions that often dominate complex posteriors in high-dimensional, multimodal, or heavy-tailed Bayesian models. At the same time, Bayesian updating provides a principled mechanism to adapt biasing distributions and quantify uncertainty when estimating small probabilities from limited or extreme data. The project aims to design Bayesian-guided rare-event schemes, study their efficiency, and integrate them into MCMC and particle filtering to improve sampling of unlikely but influential states. Applications include reliability, extreme-value modeling, and tail-risk inference. The goal is a unified methodology where rare-event methods enhance Bayesian algorithms and Bayesian structure informs rare-event estimation.