1. A method for modeling a non-linear empirical process, comprising the steps of: creating an initial model generally corresponding to the non-linear empirical process to be modeled, the initial model having an initial input and an initial output; constructing a non-linear network model based on the initial model, the non-linear network model having multiple inputs based on the initial input and a global behavior for the non-linear network model as a whole that conforms generally to the initial output; and optimizing the non-linear network model based on empirical inputs to produce an optimized model by constraining the global behavior of the non-linear network model.