# Semi Conditional Variational Auto-Encoder for Flow Reconstruction and Uncertainty Quantification from Limited Observations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.09644 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09644/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 19 Jul 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

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- [Comparison of Generative Learning Methods for Turbulence Surrogates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16417/) (2024)
- [Diagnosing the conditional-mean barrier in scientific machine-learning surrogates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28076/) (2026)
- [MoRF-AST: Calibrated Probabilistic Virtual Sensing for Structural Monitoring under Changing Operating Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.24531/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a new data-driven model to reconstruct nonlinear flow from spatially sparse observations. The model is a version of a conditional variational auto-encoder (CVAE), which allows for probabilistic reconstruction and thus uncertainty quantification of the prediction. We show that in our model, conditioning on the measurements from the complete flow data leads to a CVAE where only the decoder depends on the measurements. For this reason we call the model as Semi-Conditional Variational Autoencoder (SCVAE). The method, reconstructions and associated uncertainty estimates are illustrated on the velocity data from simulations of 2D flow around a cylinder and bottom currents from the Bergen Ocean Model. The reconstruction errors are compared to those of the Gappy Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (GPOD) method.
