Reduced Order Modeling for a Nonlocal Approach to Anomalous Diffusion Problems

With the recent advances in using nonlocal approaches to approximate traditional partial differential equations(PDEs), a number of new research avenues have been opened that warrant further study. One such path, that has yet to be explored, is using reduced order techniques to solve nonlocal problems. Due to the interactions between the discretized nodes or particles inherent to a nonlocal model, the system sparsity is often significantly less than its PDE counterpart. Coupling a reduced order approach to a nonlocal problem would ideally reduce the computational cost without sacrificing accuracy. This would allow for the use of a nonlocal approach in large parameter studies or uncertainty quantification. Additionally, because nonlocal problems inherently have no spatial derivatives, solutions with jump discontinuities are permitted. This work seeks to apply reduced order nonlocal concepts to a variety of problem situations including anomalous diffusion, advection, the advection-diffusion equation and solutions with spatial discontinuities. The goal is to show that one can use an accurate reduced order approximation to formulate a solution at a fraction of the cost of traditional techniques.