Forecasting urban traffic flow by SVR with continuous ACO

Accurate forecasting of inter-urban traffic flow has been one of the most important issues globally in the research on road traffic congestion. Because the information of inter-urban traffic presents a challenging situation, the traffic flow forecasting involves a rather complex nonlinear data pattern. In the recent years, the support vector regression model (SVR) has been widely used to solve nonlinear regression and time series problems. This investigation presents a short-term traffic forecasting model which combines the support vector regression model with continuous ant colony optimization algorithms (SVRCACO) to forecast inter-urban traffic flow. Additionally, a numerical example of traffic flow values from northern Taiwan is employed to elucidate the forecasting performance of the proposed SVRCACO model. The forecasting results indicate that the proposed model yields more accurate forecasting results than the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) time series model. Therefore, the SVRCACO model is a promising alternative for forecasting traffic flow.     

Electric load forecasting by support vector model

Accurately electric load forecasting has become the most important management goal, however, electric load often presents nonlinear data patterns. Therefore, a rigid forecasting approach with strong general nonlinear mapping capabilities is essential. Support vector regression (SVR) applies the structural risk minimization principle to minimize an upper bound of the generalization errors, rather than minimizing the training errors which are used by ANNs. The purpose of this paper is to present a SVR model with immune algorithm (IA) to forecast the electric loads, IA is applied to the parameter determine of SVR model. The empirical results indicate that the SVR model with IA (SVRIA) results in better forecasting performance than the other methods, namely SVMG, regression model, and ANN model.     

Rainfall forecasting by technological machine learning models

Accurate forecasting of rainfall has been one of the most important issues in hydrological research. Due to rainfall forecasting involves a rather complex nonlinear data pattern; there are lots of novel forecasting approaches to improve the forecasting accuracy. Recurrent artificial neural networks (RNNS) have played a crucial role in forecasting rainfall data. Meanwhile, support vector machines (SVMs) have been successfully employed to solve nonlinear regression and time series problems. This investigation elucidates the feasibility of hybrid model of RNNs and SVMs, namely RSVR, to forecast rainfall depth values. Moreover, chaotic particle swarm optimization algorithm (CPSO) is employed to choose the parameters of a SVR model. Subsequently, example of rainfall values during typhoon periods from Northern Taiwan is used to illustrate the proposed RSVRCPSO model. The empirical results reveal that the proposed model yields well forecasting performance, RSVRCPSO model provides a promising alternative for forecasting rainfall values.     

An improved seasonal rolling grey forecasting model using a cycle truncation accumulated generating operation for traffic flow

Accurate real-time prediction of urban traffic flows is one of the most important problems in traffic management and control optimization research. Short-term traffic flow has complex stochastic and nonlinear characteristics, and it shows a similar seasonality within intraday and weekly trends. Based on these properties, we propose an improved binding cycle truncation accumulated generating operation seasonal grey rolling forecasting model. In the new model, the traffic flow sequence of seasonal fluctuation is converted to a flat sequence using the cycle truncation accumulated generating operation. Then, grey modeling of the cycle truncation accumulated generating operation sequence weakens the stochastic disturbances and highlights the intrinsic grey exponential law after the sequence is accumulated. Finally, rolling forecasts of the limited data reflect the new information priority and timeliness of the grey prediction. Two numerical traffic flow examples from China and Canada, including four groups at different time intervals (1 h, 15 min, 10 min, and 5 min), are used to verify the performance of the new model under different traffic flow conditions. The prediction results show that the model has good adaptability and stability and can effectively predict the seasonal variations in traffic flow. In 15 or 10 min traffic flow forecasts, the proposed model shows better performance than the autoregressive moving average model, wavelet neural network model and seasonal discrete grey forecasting model.     

SIOPRED: a prediction and optimisation integrated system for demand

This paper presents a forecasting support system based on the generalised Holt-Winters exponential smoothing scheme to forecast time series of levels of demand. It is conceived as an integrated tool which has been implemented in Visual Basic. For improving the accuracy of automatic forecasting it uses an optimisation-based scheme which unifies the stages of estimation of the parameters and model selection. Based on this scheme, suitable forecasts and prediction intervals are obtained. The performance of the proposed system is compared with a number of well-established automatic forecasting procedures with respect to the 3003 time series included in the M3-competition.      

Application of seasonal SVR with chaotic gravitational search algorithm in electricity forecasting

Hybridization chaotic mapping functions with optimization algorithms into a support vector regression model has been shown its efficient potential to avoid converging prematurely. It is deserved to explore more possibility by hybridizing with other optimization algorithms. Electricity demand sometimes demonstrates a seasonal tendency due to complicate economic activities or climate cyclic nature. This investigation presents a SVR-based electricity forecasting model which applied a novel hybrid algorithm, namely chaotic gravitational search algorithm (CGSA), to improve the forecasting performance. The proposed CGSA employs the chaotic local search by logistic chaotic mapping function in the iteration of the original GSA to search and refine the current best solution. In addition, seasonal mechanism is also applied to deal with seasonal electricity tendency. A numerical example from an existed reference is used to illustrate the forecasting performance of the proposed SSVRCGSA model. The forecasting results indicate that the proposed model yields more accurate forecasting results than ARIMA and TF-ε-SVR-SA models.     

Adaptive Holt—Winters Forecasting

The Holt-Winters method has been found to be a simple, robust and accurate method of forecasting seasonal series, but Trigg-and-Leach extensions have not proved successful. This note shows the reasons for this, and develops a Holt-Winters method which is adaptive in the Trigg-and-Leach sense. Numerical tests suggest that it may be superior to non-adaptive Holt-Winters.     

A robust support vector regression with a linear-log concave loss function

Support vector regression (SVR) is one of the most popular nonlinear regression techniques with the aim to approximate a nonlinear system with a good generalization capability. However, SVR has a major drawback in that it is sensitive to the presence of outliers. The ramp loss function for robust SVR has been introduced to resolve this problem, but SVR with ramp loss function has a non-differentiable and non-convex formulation, which is not easy to solve. Consequently, SVR with the ramp loss function requires smoothing and Concave-Convex Procedure techniques, which transform the non-differentiable and non-convex optimization to a differentiable and convex one. We present a robust SVR with linear-log concave loss function (RSLL), which does not require the transformation technique, where the linear-log concave loss function has a similar effect as the ramp loss function. The zero norm approximation and the difference of convex functions problem are employed for solving the optimization problem. The proposed RSLL approach is used to develop a robust and stable virtual metrology (VM) prediction model, which utilizes the status variables of process equipment to predict the process quality of wafer level in semiconductor manufacturing. We also compare the proposed approach to existing SVR-based methods in terms of the root mean squared error of prediction using both synthetic and real data sets. Our experimental results show that the proposed approach performs better than existing SVR-based methods regardless of the data set and type of outliers (ie, X-space and Y-space outliers), implying that it can be used as a useful alternative when the regression data contain outliers.     

混合区间多尺度分解的区间时间序列组合预测

鉴于传统预测方法一直基于“点”来衡量时间序列数据,然而现实生活中在给定的时间段内许多变量是有区间限制的,点值预测会损失波动性信息。因此,本文提出了一种基于混合区间多尺度分解的组合预测方法。首先,建立区间离散小波分解方法(IDWT)、区间经验模态分解方法(IEMD)和区间奇异普分析方法(ISSA)。其次,用本文构建的IDWT、IEMD和ISSA对区间时间序列进行多尺度分解,从而得到区间趋势序列和残差序列。然后,用霍尔特指数平滑方法(Holt's)、支持向量回归(SVR)和BP神经网络对区间趋势序列和残差序列进行组合预测得到三种分解方法下的区间时间序列预测值。最后,用BP神经网络对各预测结果进行集成得到区间时间序列最终预测值。同时,为证明模型的有效性进行了AQI空气质量的实证预测分析,结果表明,本文所提出基于混合区间多尺度分解的组合预测方法具有较高的预测精度和良好的适用性。     

Volatility forecasting via SVR–GARCH with mixture of Gaussian kernels

The support vector regression (SVR) is a supervised machine learning technique that has been successfully employed to forecast financial volatility. As the SVR is a kernel-based technique, the choice of the kernel has a great impact on its forecasting accuracy. Empirical results show that SVRs with hybrid kernels tend to beat single-kernel models in terms of forecasting accuracy. Nevertheless, no application of hybrid kernel SVR to financial volatility forecasting has been performed in previous researches. Given that the empirical evidence shows that the stock market oscillates between several possible regimes, in which the overall distribution of returns it is a mixture of normals, we attempt to find the optimal number of mixture of Gaussian kernels that improve the one-period-ahead volatility forecasting of SVR based on GARCH(1,1). The forecast performance of a mixture of one, two, three and four Gaussian kernels are evaluated on the daily returns of Nikkei and Ibovespa indexes and compared with SVR–GARCH with Morlet wavelet kernel, standard GARCH, Glosten–Jagannathan–Runkle (GJR) and nonlinear EGARCH models with normal, student-t, skew-student-t and generalized error distribution (GED) innovations by using mean absolute error (MAE), root mean squared error (RMSE) and robust Diebold–Mariano test. The results of the out-of-sample forecasts suggest that the SVR–GARCH with a mixture of Gaussian kernels can improve the volatility forecasts and capture the regime-switching behavior.     

Forecasting time series with multiple seasonal patterns

A new approach is proposed for forecasting a time series with multiple seasonal patterns. A state space model is developed for the series using the innovations approach which enables us to develop explicit models for both additive and multiplicative seasonality. Parameter estimates may be obtained using methods from exponential smoothing. The proposed model is used to examine hourly and daily patterns in hourly data for both utility loads and traffic flows. Our formulation provides a model for several existing seasonal methods and also provides new options, which result in superior forecasting performance over a range of prediction horizons. In particular, seasonal components can be updated more frequently than once during a seasonal cycle. The approach is likely to be useful in a wide range of applications involving both high and low frequency data, and it handles missing values in a straightforward manner.     

A Performance evaluation of neural network models in traffic volume forecasting

Forecasting traffic volume is an important task in controlling urban highways, guiding drivers' routes, and providing real-time transportation information. Previous research on traffic volume forecasting has concentrated on a single forecasting model and has reported positive results, which has been frequently better than those of other models. In addition, many previous researchers have claimed that neural network models are better than linear statistical models in terms of prediction accuracy. However, the forecasting power of a single model is limited to the typical cases to which the model fits best. In other words, even though many research efforts have claimed the general superiority of a single model over others in predicting future events, we believe it depends on the data characteristics used, the composition of the training data, the model architecture, and the algorithm itself.In this paper, we have studied the relationship in forecasting traffic volume between data characteristics and the forecasting accuracy of different models, particularly neural network models. To compare and test the forecasting accuracy of the models, three different data sets of traffic volume were collected from interstate highways, intercity highways, and urban intersections. The data sets show very different characteristics in terms of volatility, period, and fluctuations as measured by the Hurst exponent, the correlation dimension. The data sets were tested using a back-propagation network model, a FIR model, and a time-delayed recurrent model.The test results show that the time-delayed recurrent model outperforms other models in forecasting very randomly moving data described by a low Hurst exponent. In contrast, the FIR model shows better forecasting accuracy than the time-delayed recurrent network for relatively regular periodic data described by a high Hurst exponent. The interpretation of these results shows that the feedback mechanism of the previous error, through the temporal learning technique in the time-delayed recurrent network, naturally absorbs the dynamic change of any underlying nonlinear movement. The FIR and back-propagation model, which have claimed a nonlinear learning mechanism, may not be very good in handling randomly fluctuating events.     

Peak demand forecasting for a seasonal product using Bayesian approach

An actual demand-forecasting problem of the US apparel dealers is studied. Demand is highly fluctuating during the peak sale season and low prior to the peak season. The model is described by the continuous time stochastic process applying the Bayesian process. The standard gamma distribution is selected for the demand process and an inverse gamma distribution is chosen as the conjugate prior for the model. The choice is supported by the maximum likelihood estimate among a number of non-negative distribution models. The proposed Bayesian models predict the probability of the future demand expressed explicitly conditional on the observed demand prior to the peak season. The data set illustrates partial demand of a seasonal product procured by the US dealers from overseas. In recent years, hazard and operational risks due to weather disasters and equipment shutdowns were felt significantly. These caused supply chain disruption and unrecorded demand. The model is extended to contribute to forecast from an unrecorded data set due to supply disruption. Forecasts are compared with real data and a widely implemented adaptive Holt-Winters (H-W) seasonal forecasting model. Results show that the forecasts calculated by the proposed methods do better than those of the adaptive H-W model.     

Unsupervised extreme learning machine and support vector regression hybrid model for predicting energy commodity futures index

Support vector regression (SVR) has been successfully applied in various domains, including predicting the prices of different financial instruments like stocks, futures, options, and indices. Because of the wide variation in financial time-series data, instead of using only a single standard prediction technique like SVR, we propose a hybrid model called USELM-SVR. It is a combination of unsupervised extreme learning machine (US-ELM)-based clustering and SVR forecasting. We assessed the feasibility and effectiveness of this hybrid model using a case study, predicting the one-, two-, and three-day ahead closing values of the energy commodity futures index traded on the Multi Commodity Exchange in India. Our experimental results show that the USELM-SVR is viable and effective, and produces better forecasts than our benchmark models (standard SVR, a hybrid of SVR with self-organizing map (SOM) clustering, and a hybrid of SVR with k-means clustering). Moreover, the proposed USELM-SVR architecture is useful as an alternative model for prediction tasks when we require more accurate predictions.     

Computational aspects of robust Holt-Winters smoothing based on M-estimation

To obtain a robust version of exponential and Holt-Winters smoothing the idea of M-estimation can be used. The difficulty is the formulation of an easy-to-use recursive formula for its computation. A first attempt was made by Cipra (Robust exponential smoothing, J. Forecast. 11 (1992), 57–69). The recursive formulation presented there, however, is unstable. In this paper, a new recursive computing scheme is proposed. A simulation study illustrates that the new recursions result in smaller forecast errors on average. The forecast performance is further improved upon by using auxiliary robust starting values and robust scale estimates. This research has been supported by the Research Fund K.U. Leuven and the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Contract number G.0594.05).     

A differential evolution-based regression framework for forecasting Bitcoin price

This research proposes a differential evolution-based regression framework for forecasting one day ahead price of Bitcoin. The maximal overlap discrete wavelet transformation first decomposes the original series into granular linear and nonlinear components. We then fit polynomial regression with interaction (PRI) and support vector regression (SVR) on linear and nonlinear components and obtain component-wise projections. The sum of these projections constitutes the final forecast. For accurate predictions, the PRI coefficients and tuning of the hyperparameters of SVR must be precisely estimated. Differential evolution, a metaheuristic optimization technique, helps to achieve these goals. We compare the forecast accuracy of the proposed regression framework with six advanced predictive modeling algorithms- multilayer perceptron neural network, random forest, adaptive neural fuzzy inference system, standalone SVR, multiple adaptive regression spline, and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator. Finally, we perform the numerical experimentation based on—(1) the daily closing prices of Bitcoin for January 10, 2013, to February 23, 2019, and (2) randomly generated surrogate time series through Monte Carlo analysis. The forecast accuracy of the proposed framework is higher than the other predictive modeling algorithms.

     

Forecasting concentrations of air pollutants by logarithm support vector regression with immune algorithms

The need to minimize the potential impact of air pollutants on humans has made the accurate prediction of concentrations of air pollutants a crucial subject in environmental research. Support vector regression (SVR) models have been successfully employed to solve time series problems in many fields. The use of SVR models for forecasting concentrations of air pollutants has not been widely investigated. Data preprocessing procedures and the parameter selection of SVR models can radically influence forecasting performance. This study proposes a support vector regression with logarithm preprocessing procedure and immune algorithms (SVRLIA) model which takes advantage of the structural risk minimization of SVR models, the data smoothing of preprocessing procedures, and the optimization of immune algorithms, in order to more accurately forecast concentrations of air pollutants. Three pollutants, namely particulate matter (PM₁₀), nitrogen oxide, (NO_x), and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), are collected and examined to determine the feasibility of the developed SVRLIA model. Experimental results reveal that the SVRLIA model can accurately forecast concentrations of air pollutants.     

Study on network traffic forecast model of SVR optimized by GAFSA

There are some problems, such as low precision, on existing network traffic forecast model. In accordance with these problems, this paper proposed the network traffic forecast model of support vector regression (SVR) algorithm optimized by global artificial fish swarm algorithm (GAFSA). GAFSA constitutes an improvement of artificial fish swarm algorithm, which is a swarm intelligence optimization algorithm with a significant effect of optimization. The optimum training parameters used for SVR could be calculated by optimizing chosen parameters, which would make the forecast more accurate. With the optimum training parameters searched by GAFSA algorithm, a model of network traffic forecast, which greatly solved problems of great errors in SVR improved by others intelligent algorithms, could be built with the forecast result approaching stability and the increased forecast precision. The simulation shows that, compared with other models (e.g. GA-SVR, CPSO-SVR), the forecast results of GAFSA-SVR network traffic forecast model is more stable with the precision improved to more than 89%, which plays an important role on instructing network control behavior and analyzing security situation.     

最佳灰色回归组合模型及其在中国火灾预测中的应用

火灾每年给国家和人民生命财产造成巨大损失.火灾现象具有随机性、模糊性,是个复杂的灰色系统行为.研究火灾发生规律及发展趋势,具有实用价值.为此,首先给出最小二乘估计(LSE)意义下的最佳组合预测模型的定义,并求得组合模型的权的公式和证明权的唯一性.其次,用回归分析方法建立多个回归模型,并按以下三条标准:①回归指数(或相关系数)r大、②系统误差s小、③模型精度p高,选定最佳非线性回归模型;用灰色理论建立多个灰色模型,并按以下三条标准:①后验差比值c小、②小误差概率P大、③预测关联度ξ大,选定最佳灰色模型;再用最小二乘法将最佳回归模型与最佳灰色模型有机地结合起来建立的中国火灾最佳灰色回归组合预测模型.最佳灰色回归组合预测模型综合利用前两者提供的不同的有用信息,改善了单一模型的局限性,提高了模型的预测精度,减少了预测误差,使预测效果更佳.组合模型预测中国年火灾起数处于动态增长过程.     

Forecasting nonlinear time series with a hybrid methodology

In recent years, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been used for forecasting in time series in the literature. Although it is possible to model both linear and nonlinear structures in time series by using ANNs, they are not able to handle both structures equally well. Therefore, the hybrid methodology combining ARIMA and ANN models have been used in the literature. In this study, a new hybrid approach combining Elman’s Recurrent Neural Networks (ERNN) and ARIMA models is proposed. The proposed hybrid approach is applied to Canadian Lynx data and it is found that the proposed approach has the best forecasting accuracy.