SuperBench: A Super-Resolution Benchmark Dataset for Scientific Machine Learning
This addresses a gap for researchers in scientific machine learning by providing a benchmark to compare and validate super-resolution methods, though it is incremental as it focuses on dataset creation rather than a new method.
The authors tackled the lack of standardized benchmark datasets for super-resolution methods in scientific machine learning by introducing SuperBench, a dataset with high-resolution data from fluid flows, cosmology, and weather, and found that existing deep learning methods have limitations in capturing fine-scale features and preserving physical properties.
Super-resolution (SR) techniques aim to enhance data resolution, enabling the retrieval of finer details, and improving the overall quality and fidelity of the data representation. There is growing interest in applying SR methods to complex spatiotemporal systems within the Scientific Machine Learning (SciML) community, with the hope of accelerating numerical simulations and/or improving forecasts in weather, climate, and related areas. However, the lack of standardized benchmark datasets for comparing and validating SR methods hinders progress and adoption in SciML. To address this, we introduce SuperBench, the first benchmark dataset featuring high-resolution datasets, including data from fluid flows, cosmology, and weather. Here, we focus on validating spatial SR performance from data-centric and physics-preserved perspectives, as well as assessing robustness to data degradation tasks. While deep learning-based SR methods (developed in the computer vision community) excel on certain tasks, despite relatively limited prior physics information, we identify limitations of these methods in accurately capturing intricate fine-scale features and preserving fundamental physical properties and constraints in scientific data. These shortcomings highlight the importance and subtlety of incorporating domain knowledge into ML models. We anticipate that SuperBench will help to advance SR methods for science.