Girard, A. and Murray-Smith, R. (2005) Gaussian processes: prediction at a noisy input and application to iterative multiple-step ahead forecasting

With the Gaussian Process model, the predictive distribution of the output corresponding to a new given input is Gaussian. But if this input is uncertain or noisy, the predictive distribution becomes non-Gaussian. We present an analytical approach that consists of computing only the mean and variance of this new distribution (Gaussian approximation). We show how, depending on the form of the covariance function of the process, we can evaluate these moments exactly or approximately (within a Taylor approximation of the covariance function). We apply our results to the iterative multiple-step ahead prediction of non-linear dynamic systems with propagation of the uncertainty as we predict ahead in time. Finally, using numerical examples, we compare the Gaussian approximation to the numerical approximation of the true predictive distribution by simple Monte-Carlo.