Pierre-Luc St-Charles

arxiv.org

A deep learning benchmark for first break detection from hardrock seismic reflection data

Bruno Rousseau

Joumana Ghosn

Gilles Bellefleur

Ernst Schetselaar

2023-12-13

GEOPHYSICS (published)

Deep Learning Benchmark for First Break Detection from Hardrock Seismic Reflection Data

Bruno Rousseau

Joumana Ghosn

Gilles Bellefleur

E. Schetselaar

Deep learning techniques are used to tackle a variety of tasks related to seismic data processing and interpretation. While many works have … (see more)shown the benefits of deep learning, assessing the generalization capabilities of proposed methods to data acquired in different conditions and geological environments remains challenging. This is especially true for applications in hardrock environments where seismic surveys are still relatively rare. The primary factors that impede the adoption of machine learning in geosciences include the lack of publicly available and labeled datasets, and the use of inadequate evaluation methodologies. Since machine learning models are prone to overfit and underperform when the data used to train them is site-specific, the applicability of these models on new survey data that could be considered “out-of-distribution” is rarely addressed. This is unfortunate, as evaluating predictive models in out-of-distribution settings can provide a good insight into their usefulness in real-world use cases. To tackle these issues, we propose a simple benchmarking methodology for first break picking to evaluate the transferability of deep learning models that are trained across different environments and acquisition conditions. For this, we consider a reflection seismic survey dataset acquired at five distinct hardrock mining sites combined with annotations for first break picking. We train and evaluate a baseline deep learning solution based on a U-Net for future comparisons, and discuss potential improvements to this approach.

2023-10-10

Geophysics (published)

Transformers in Reinforcement Learning: A Survey

Pranav Agarwal

Aamer Abdul Rahman

Simon J. D. Prince

Samira Ebrahimi Kahou

Transformers have significantly impacted domains like natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics, where they improve perform… (see more)ance compared to other neural networks. This survey explores how transformers are used in reinforcement learning (RL), where they are seen as a promising solution for addressing challenges such as unstable training, credit assignment, lack of interpretability, and partial observability. We begin by providing a brief domain overview of RL, followed by a discussion on the challenges of classical RL algorithms. Next, we delve into the properties of the transformer and its variants and discuss the characteristics that make them well-suited to address the challenges inherent in RL. We examine the application of transformers to various aspects of RL, including representation learning, transition and reward function modeling, and policy optimization. We also discuss recent research that aims to enhance the interpretability and efficiency of transformers in RL, using visualization techniques and efficient training strategies. Often, the transformer architecture must be tailored to the specific needs of a given application. We present a broad overview of how transformers have been adapted for several applications, including robotics, medicine, language modeling, cloud computing, and combinatorial optimization. We conclude by discussing the limitations of using transformers in RL and assess their potential for catalyzing future breakthroughs in this field.

2023-07-12

ArXiv (preprint)

arxiv.org

Proactive Contact Tracing

Prateek Gupta

Nasim Rahaman

Hannah Alsdurf

Nanor Minoyan

Soren Harnois-Leblanc

Joanna Merckx

Andrew Robert Williams

Victor Schmidt

Akshay Patel

Yang Zhang

David Buckeridge

Bernhard Schölkopf

2023-03-13

PLOS Digital Health (published)

Proactive Contact Tracing

Prateek Gupta

Nasim Rahaman

Hannah Alsdurf

Nanor Minoyan

Soren Harnois-Leblanc

Joanna Merckx

Andrew Williams

Victor Schmidt

Akshay Patel

Yang Zhang

David Buckeridge

Bernhard Schölkopf

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred an unprecedented demand for interventions that can reduce disease spread without excessively restricting d… (see more)aily activity, given negative impacts on mental health and economic outcomes. Digital contact tracing (DCT) apps have emerged as a component of the epidemic management toolkit. Existing DCT apps typically recommend quarantine to all digitally-recorded contacts of test-confirmed cases. Over-reliance on testing may, however, impede the effectiveness of such apps, since by the time cases are confirmed through testing, onward transmissions are likely to have occurred. Furthermore, most cases are infectious over a short period; only a subset of their contacts are likely to become infected. These apps do not fully utilize data sources to base their predictions of transmission risk during an encounter, leading to recommendations of quarantine to many uninfected people and associated slowdowns in economic activity. This phenomenon, commonly termed as “pingdemic,” may additionally contribute to reduced compliance to public health measures. In this work, we propose a novel DCT framework, Proactive Contact Tracing (PCT), which uses multiple sources of information (e.g. self-reported symptoms, received messages from contacts) to estimate app users’ infectiousness histories and provide behavioral recommendations. PCT methods are by design proactive, predicting spread before it occurs. We present an interpretable instance of this framework, the Rule-based PCT algorithm, designed via a multi-disciplinary collaboration among epidemiologists, computer scientists, and behavior experts. Finally, we develop an agent-based model that allows us to compare different DCT methods and evaluate their performance in negotiating the trade-off between epidemic control and restricting population mobility. Performing extensive sensitivity analysis across user behavior, public health policy, and virological parameters, we compare Rule-based PCT to i) binary contact tracing (BCT), which exclusively relies on test results and recommends a fixed-duration quarantine, and ii) household quarantine (HQ). Our results suggest that both BCT and Rule-based PCT improve upon HQ, however, Rule-based PCT is more efficient at controlling spread of disease than BCT across a range of scenarios. In terms of cost-effectiveness, we show that Rule-based PCT pareto-dominates BCT, as demonstrated by a decrease in Disability Adjusted Life Years, as well as Temporary Productivity Loss. Overall, we find that Rule-based PCT outperforms existing approaches across a varying range of parameters. By leveraging anonymized infectiousness estimates received from digitally-recorded contacts, PCT is able to notify potentially infected users earlier than BCT methods and prevent onward transmissions. Our results suggest that PCT-based applications could be a useful tool in managing future epidemics.

2023-03-01

PLOS Digital Health (published)

Proactive Contact Tracing

Prateek Gupta

Nasim Rahaman

Hannah Alsdurf

Nanor Minoyan

Soren Harnois-Leblanc

Joanna Merckx

Andrew Williams

Victor Schmidt

Akshay Patel

Yang Zhang

David L Buckeridge

Bernhard Schölkopf

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred an unprecedented demand for interventions that can reduce disease spread without excessively restricting d… (see more)aily activity, given negative impacts on mental health and economic outcomes. Digital contact tracing (DCT) apps have emerged as a component of the epidemic management toolkit. Existing DCT apps typically recommend quarantine to all digitally-recorded contacts of test-confirmed cases. Over-reliance on testing may, however, impede the effectiveness of such apps, since by the time cases are confirmed through testing, onward transmissions are likely to have occurred. Furthermore, most cases are infectious over a short period; only a subset of their contacts are likely to become infected. These apps do not fully utilize data sources to base their predictions of transmission risk during an encounter, leading to recommendations of quarantine to many uninfected people and associated slowdowns in economic activity. This phenomenon, commonly termed as “pingdemic,” may additionally contribute to reduced compliance to public health measures. In this work, we propose a novel DCT framework, Proactive Contact Tracing (PCT), which uses multiple sources of information (e.g. self-reported symptoms, received messages from contacts) to estimate app users’ infectiousness histories and provide behavioral recommendations. PCT methods are by design proactive, predicting spread before it occurs. We present an interpretable instance of this framework, the Rule-based PCT algorithm, designed via a multi-disciplinary collaboration among epidemiologists, computer scientists, and behavior experts. Finally, we develop an agent-based model that allows us to compare different DCT methods and evaluate their performance in negotiating the trade-off between epidemic control and restricting population mobility. Performing extensive sensitivity analysis across user behavior, public health policy, and virological parameters, we compare Rule-based PCT to i) binary contact tracing (BCT), which exclusively relies on test results and recommends a fixed-duration quarantine, and ii) household quarantine (HQ). Our results suggest that both BCT and Rule-based PCT improve upon HQ, however, Rule-based PCT is more efficient at controlling spread of disease than BCT across a range of scenarios. In terms of cost-effectiveness, we show that Rule-based PCT pareto-dominates BCT, as demonstrated by a decrease in Disability Adjusted Life Years, as well as Temporary Productivity Loss. Overall, we find that Rule-based PCT outperforms existing approaches across a varying range of parameters. By leveraging anonymized infectiousness estimates received from digitally-recorded contacts, PCT is able to notify potentially infected users earlier than BCT methods and prevent onward transmissions. Our results suggest that PCT-based applications could be a useful tool in managing future epidemics.

2023-03-01

PLOS Digital Health (published)

Proactive Contact Tracing

Prateek Gupta

Nasim Rahaman

Hannah Alsdurf

Nanor Minoyan

Soren Harnois-Leblanc

Joanna Merckx

Andrew Williams

Victor Schmidt

Akshay Patel

Yang Zhang

David L Buckeridge

Bernhard Schölkopf

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred an unprecedented demand for interventions that can reduce disease spread without excessively restricting d… (see more)aily activity, given negative impacts on mental health and economic outcomes. Digital contact tracing (DCT) apps have emerged as a component of the epidemic management toolkit. Existing DCT apps typically recommend quarantine to all digitally-recorded contacts of test-confirmed cases. Over-reliance on testing may, however, impede the effectiveness of such apps, since by the time cases are confirmed through testing, onward transmissions are likely to have occurred. Furthermore, most cases are infectious over a short period; only a subset of their contacts are likely to become infected. These apps do not fully utilize data sources to base their predictions of transmission risk during an encounter, leading to recommendations of quarantine to many uninfected people and associated slowdowns in economic activity. This phenomenon, commonly termed as “pingdemic,” may additionally contribute to reduced compliance to public health measures. In this work, we propose a novel DCT framework, Proactive Contact Tracing (PCT), which uses multiple sources of information (e.g. self-reported symptoms, received messages from contacts) to estimate app users’ infectiousness histories and provide behavioral recommendations. PCT methods are by design proactive, predicting spread before it occurs. We present an interpretable instance of this framework, the Rule-based PCT algorithm, designed via a multi-disciplinary collaboration among epidemiologists, computer scientists, and behavior experts. Finally, we develop an agent-based model that allows us to compare different DCT methods and evaluate their performance in negotiating the trade-off between epidemic control and restricting population mobility. Performing extensive sensitivity analysis across user behavior, public health policy, and virological parameters, we compare Rule-based PCT to i) binary contact tracing (BCT), which exclusively relies on test results and recommends a fixed-duration quarantine, and ii) household quarantine (HQ). Our results suggest that both BCT and Rule-based PCT improve upon HQ, however, Rule-based PCT is more efficient at controlling spread of disease than BCT across a range of scenarios. In terms of cost-effectiveness, we show that Rule-based PCT pareto-dominates BCT, as demonstrated by a decrease in Disability Adjusted Life Years, as well as Temporary Productivity Loss. Overall, we find that Rule-based PCT outperforms existing approaches across a varying range of parameters. By leveraging anonymized infectiousness estimates received from digitally-recorded contacts, PCT is able to notify potentially infected users earlier than BCT methods and prevent onward transmissions. Our results suggest that PCT-based applications could be a useful tool in managing future epidemics.

2023-03-01

PLOS Digital Health (published)

Predicting Infectiousness for Proactive Contact Tracing

Prateek Gupta

Nasim Rahaman

Eilif Benjamin Muller

Meng Qu

Victor Schmidt

Hannah Alsdurf

gaetan caron

satya ortiz gagne

Bernhard Schölkopf … (see 3 more)

Abhinav Sharma

Jian Tang

Andrew Robert Williams

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread rapidly worldwide, overwhelming manual contact tracing in many countries and resulting in widespread lockdo… (see more)wns for emergency containment. Large-scale digital contact tracing (DCT) has emerged as a potential solution to resume economic and social activity while minimizing spread of the virus. Various DCT methods have been proposed, each making trade-offs between privacy, mobility restrictions, and public health. The most common approach, binary contact tracing (BCT), models infection as a binary event, informed only by an individual's test results, with corresponding binary recommendations that either all or none of the individual's contacts quarantine. BCT ignores the inherent uncertainty in contacts and the infection process, which could be used to tailor messaging to high-risk individuals, and prompt proactive testing or earlier warnings. It also does not make use of observations such as symptoms or pre-existing medical conditions, which could be used to make more accurate infectiousness predictions. In this paper, we use a recently-proposed COVID-19 epidemiological simulator to develop and test methods that can be deployed to a smartphone to locally and proactively predict an individual's infectiousness (risk of infecting others) based on their contact history and other information, while respecting strong privacy constraints. Predictions are used to provide personalized recommendations to the individual via an app, as well as to send anonymized messages to the individual's contacts, who use this information to better predict their own infectiousness, an approach we call proactive contact tracing (PCT). We find a deep-learning based PCT method which improves over BCT for equivalent average mobility, suggesting PCT could help in safe re-opening and second-wave prevention.

2021-01-12

ICLR.cc/2021/Conference (spotlight)

openreview.net

COVI-AgentSim: an Agent-based Model for Evaluating Methods of Digital Contact Tracing

Prateek Gupta

Nasim Rahaman

Hannah Alsdurf

Abhinav Sharma

Nanor Minoyan

Soren Harnois-Leblanc

Victor Schmidt

Tristan Deleu

Andrew Robert Williams

Akshay Patel

Meng Qu

Olexa Bilaniuk

gaetan caron

Pierre Luc Carrier

satya ortiz gagne

Marc-Andre Rousseau

David Buckeridge … (see 9 more)

Joumana Ghosn

Yang Zhang

Bernhard Schölkopf

Jian Tang

Irina Rish

Joanna Merckx

Eilif Benjamin Muller

2020-10-02

OpenReview.net/Anonymous_Preprint (unknown)

openreview.net

Multi-Image Super-Resolution for Remote Sensing using Deep Recurrent Networks

Md Rifat Arefin

Vincent Michalski

Alfredo Kalaitzis

Sookyung Kim

Samira Ebrahimi Kahou

High-resolution satellite imagery is critical for various earth observation applications related to environment monitoring, geoscience, fore… (see more)casting, and land use analysis. However, the acquisition cost of such high-quality imagery due to the scarcity of providers and needs for high-frequency revisits restricts its accessibility in many fields. In this work, we present a data-driven, multi-image super resolution approach to alleviate these problems. Our approach is based on an end-to-end deep neural network that consists of an encoder, a fusion module, and a decoder. The encoder extracts co-registered highly efficient feature representations from low-resolution images of a scene. A Gated Re-current Unit (GRU)-based module acts as the fusion module, aggregating features into a combined representation. Finally, a decoder reconstructs the super-resolved image. The proposed model is evaluated on the PROBA-V dataset released in a recent competition held by the European Space Agency. Our results show that it performs among the top contenders and offers a new practical solution for real-world applications.

2020-06-01

2020 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW) (published)