Parameter identification problems are formulated in a probabilistic language, where the randomness reflects the uncertainty about the knowledge of the true values. This setting allows conceptually easily to incorporate new information, e.g. through a measurement, by connecting it to Bayes's theorem. The unknown quantity is modelled as a (may be high-dimensional) random variable. Such a description has two constituents, the measurable function and the measure. One group of methods is identified as updating the measure, the other group changes the measurable function. We connect both groups with the relatively recent methods of functional approximation of stochastic problems, and introduce especially in combination with the second group of methods a new procedure which does not need any sampling, hence works completely deterministically. It also seems to be the fastest and more reliable when compared with other methods. We show by example that it also works for highly nonlinear non-smooth problems with non-Gaussian measures.

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In a Bayesian setting, inverse problems and uncertainty quantification (UQ) -the propagation of uncertainty through a computational (forward) model -are strongly connected. In the form of conditional expectation the Bayesian update becomes computationally attractive. We give a detailed account of this approach via conditional approximation, various approximations, and the construction of filters. Together with a functional or spectral approach for the forward UQ there is no need for time-consuming and slowly convergent Monte Carlo sampling. The developed sampling-free non-linear Bayesian update in form of a filter is derived from the variational problem associated with conditional expectation. This formulation in general calls for further discretisation to make the computation possible, and we choose a polynomial approximation. After giving details on the actual computation in the framework of functional or spectral approximations, we demonstrate the workings of the algorithm on a number of examples of increasing complexity. At last, we compare the linear and nonlinear Bayesian update in form of a filter on some examples.

When a mathematical or computational model is used to analyse some system, it is usual that some parameters resp. functions or fields in the model are not known, and hence uncertain. These parametric quantities are then identified by actual observations of the response of the real system. In a probabilistic setting, Bayes's theory is the proper mathematical background for this identification process. The possibility of being able to compute a conditional expectation turns out to be crucial for this purpose. We show how this theoretical background can be used in an actual numerical procedure, and shortly discuss various numerical approximations.

Computational uncertainty quantification in a probabilistic setting is a special case of a parametric problem. Parameter dependent state vectors lead via association to a linear operator to analogues of covariance, its spectral decomposition, and the associated Karhunen-Loève expansion. From this one obtains a generalised tensor representation. The parameter in question may be a tuple of numbers, a function, a stochastic process, or a random tensor field. The tensor factorisation may be cascaded, leading to tensors of higher degree. When carried on a discretised level, such factorisations in the form of low-rank approximations lead to very sparse representations of the high dimensional quantities involved. Updating of uncertainty for new information is an important part of uncertainty quantification. Formulated in terms or random variables instead of measures, the Bayesian update is a projection and allows the use of the tensor factorisations also in this case.

with spatially varying coefficients defined by random fields.

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