Methods for testing transport models

This report documents progress to date under a three-year contract for developing ''Methods for Testing Transport Models.'' The work described includes (1) choice of best methods for producing ''code emulators'' for analysis of very large global energy confinement databases, (2) recent applications of stratified regressions for treating individual measurement errors as well as calibration/modeling errors randomly distributed across various tokamaks, (3) Bayesian methods for utilizing prior information due to previous empirical and/or theoretical analyses, (4) extension of code emulator methodology to profile data, (5) application of nonlinear least squares estimators to simulation of profile data, (6) development of more sophisticated statistical methods for handling profile data, (7) acquisition of a much larger experimental database, and (8) extensive exploratory simulation work on a large variety of discharges using recently improved models for transport theories and boundary conditions. From all of this work, it has been possible to define a complete methodology for testing new sets of reference transport models against much larger multi-institutional databases