A multi-stage methodology for selecting input variables in ANN forecasting of river flows

Monthly river flow forecasting using artificial neural network and support vector regression models coupled with wavelet transform

A single artificial neural network (ANN) model is inadequate for predicting phytoplankton biomass in a large lake due to its high spatial heterogeneity. In this study, ANN was combined with a clustering technique to simulate phytoplankton biomass in a large lake (Lake Poyang) using a 7-year dataset. Two ANN models (named ANN_Downstream and ANN_Upstream) were developed for the downstream and upstream areas based on the k-means clustering results of 17 sampling sites at Lake Poyang, China. They performed better than ANN_Poyang (an ANN model for the whole lake), indicating the success of the clustering technique in improving ANN models for predicting phytoplankton biomass in different sub-regions of the large lake. A sensitivity analysis based on ANN_Downstream and ANN_Upstream showed that phytoplankton dynamics responded differently to environmental variables in different sub-regions of Lake Poyang. This case study demonstrated the good performance of ANN models in describing phytoplankton dynamics, and the potential of coupling ANN with a clustering technique to describe the spatial heterogeneity of natural ecosystems.

In this research work, we developed a mathematical model of a digital currency market, involving daily closing price as a function of time. We proposed the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model. We observed that our ANN model was able to predict the daily closing price of Bitcoin and also make six weeks forecast to a reasonable degree of accuracy. We equally observe that the time dependent ANN model can actually give digital currency traders and investors a clue on when to trade off their digital assets with minimum risk. We therefore, recommend that ANN model should be incorporated into digital currency trading platforms as a signal tool to enable digital currency traders take more informed and less risky trading decisions. From our findings, we would advise traders who wish to employ ANN model to consider a smaller time frame say a few weeks’ time interval for their predictions. We observed also that ANN models have limitations when it comes to manual computation or implementation in Microsoft Excel, especially when dealing with very large input values. This is because of the saturation characteristic of our ANN inner layer activation function (viz; tanh function) which can lead to identical output values for different input values, making it difficult to replicate the ANN model's behavior. Furthermore, ANN models often involve complex interactions between multiple neurons, layers, and activation functions, which can be challenging to replicate manually.

The present study was carried out using artificial neural network (ANN) model for predicting the sodium hazardness, i.e., sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), percent sodium (%Na) residual, Kelly’s ratio (KR), and residual sodium carbonate (RSC) in the groundwater of the Pratapgarh district of Southern Rajasthan, India. This study focuses on verifying the suitability of water for irrigational purpose, wherein more groundwater decline coupled with water quality problems compared to the other areas are observed. The southern part of the Rajasthan State is more populated as compared to the rest of the parts. The southern part of the Rajasthan is more populated as compared to the rest of the Rajasthan, which leads to the industrialization, urbanization, and evolutionary changes in the agricultural production in the southern region. Therefore, it is necessary to propose innovative methods for analyzing and predicting the water quality (WQ) for agricultural use. The study aims to develop an optimized artificial neural network (ANN) model to predict the sodium hazardness of groundwater for irrigation purposes. The ANN model was developed using ‘nntool’ in MATLAB software. The ANN model was trained and validated for ten years (2010–2020) of water quality data. An L-M 3-layer back propagation technique was adopted in ANN architecture to develop a reliable and accurate model for predicting the suitability of groundwater for irrigation. Furthermore, statistical performance indicators, such as RMSE, IA, R, and MBE, were used to check the consistency of ANN prediction results. The developed ANN model, i.e., ANN4 (3-12-1), ANN4 (4-15-1), ANN1 (4-5-1), and ANN4 (3-12-1), were found best suited for SAR, %Na, RSC, and KR water quality indicators for the Pratapgarh district. The performance analysis of the developed model (3-12-1) led to a correlation coefficient = 1, IA = 1, RMS = 0.14, and MBE = 0.0050. Hence, the proposed model provides a satisfactory match to the empirically generated datasets in the observed wells. This development of water quality modeling using an ANN model may help to useful for the planning of sustainable management and groundwater resources with crop suitability plans as per water quality.

Multivariate regression (MVR) and different artificial neural network (ANN) models developed for optical transparency of conductive polymer nanocomposite films

The geographical location of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (latitude between 26° and 32° North and longitude between 51° and 56° East) favors the development and utilization of solar energy. This chapter presents estimation models for the global solar radiation (GSR) in Dubai, UAE. It compares between six empirical regression models and the best of 11 different configurations of artificial neural network (ANN) models. The models have been developed using measured average daily GSR data for 7 years (2002–2008) while the measured data for the years 2009–2010 are used for testing the models. Results of monthly average daily GSR data of all the empirical models for the test period 2009–2010 yield low statistical error parameters and coefficients of determination (R2) better than 96 %. Comparison with ANN models and Solar Radiation (SoDa) Web site data shows that the optimal multilayer perceptron (MLP) ANN model is the best with R2 = 98 %, and with the lowest statistical error parameters. The results also confirm that a simple linear regression model provides a very good estimation for monthly and daily average GSR data.

Laboratory experiments were used to estimate the hydraulic performance of emitters, i.e., the emitter flow variation (qvar) and manufacturer’s coefficient of variation (CVm), by measuring the discharge of different labyrinth-channel emitters at different operating pressures (P) and water temperatures (T). Considering the importance of the structural parameters of the labyrinth-channel emitters in drip irrigation design, which has been experimentally confirmed, artificial neural network (ANN) and gene expression programming (GEP) models were developed to predict qvar and CVm. The ANN and GEP models were trained and tested using structural parameters (including the number, height (H), and spacing of trapezoidal units and the flow path width and length) of different labyrinth-channel emitters, P and T as the input variables, and qvar and CVm as the outputs. Statistical criteria, including the coefficients of correlation (r), relative root-mean-square error (RRMSE), and mean absolute error (MAE), were used to examine the accuracy of the developed models. The ANN models exhibited good correlation with experimental values, with high r values 0.995 and 0.969 for qvar and 0.997 and 0.947 for CVm in the training and testing processes, respectively. The ANN models had lower RRMSE and MAE values than the GEP models. Furthermore, H was the dominant variable for obtaining the most accurate prediction model. The results confirm that the ANN models are superior to the GEP models for the prediction of the hydraulic performance of emitters.

ABSTRACTStatistical methods such as Poisson distribution, negative binomial regression (NB), and zero inflated negative binomial regression (ZINB) have generally been used in road safety studies to establish the complex relationships between variables. Over the last few years, the artificial neural networks (ANN) model has also been used. The ANN model does not have any prior limitations such as the equality condition of mean and variance observed in Poisson regression. However, though the ANN model has been used in the analysis of different accident types, to the best of our knowledge, no study has used the ANN model for establishing this relationship with truck accident data on divided multilane interurban roads. In this study, the road sections D750/07–D750/15 in Ankara–Aksaray–Eregli, Turkey, were considered and truck accident data from 2008 to 2011 were analyzed using NB and ANN. The analysis show that the ANN model has lower errors and higher R2 values than NB and performs slightly better than NB for predicting the number of trucks involved in accidents. Based on a comparison of performances the study concludes, that ANN could be used as an alternative model for analyzing truck accident data on divided multilane interurban roads in Turkey.

BackgroundThis study aimed to develop an artificial neural network (ANN) model for predicting synchronous organ-specific metastasis in lung cancer (LC) patients.MethodsA total of 62,151 patients who diagnosed as LC without data missing between 2010 and 2015 were identified from Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. The ANN model was trained and tested on an 75/25 split of the dataset. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, area under the curve (AUC) and sensitivity were used to evaluate and compare the ANN model with the random forest model.ResultsFor distant metastasis in the whole cohort, the ANN model had metrics AUC = 0.759, accuracy = 0.669, sensitivity = 0.906, and specificity = 0.613, which was better than the random forest model. For organ-specific metastasis in the cohort with distant metastasis, the sensitivity in bone metastasis, brain metastasis and liver metastasis were 0.913, 0.906 and 0.925, respectively. The most important variable was separate tumor nodules with 100% importance. The second important variable was visceral pleural invasion for distant metastasis, while histology for organ-specific metastasis.ConclusionsOur study developed a “two-step” ANN model for predicting synchronous organ-specific metastasis in LC patients. This ANN model may provide clinicians with more personalized clinical decisions, contribute to rationalize metastasis screening, and reduce the burden on patients and the health care system.

این مطالعه به منظور بررسی پیش بینی شاخص های عملکرد تولیدی در مرغان تخم گذار با استفاده از شبکه های عصبی مصنوعی و رگرسیون غیرخطی چندگانه انجام شد. بررسی بر روی اطلاعات چهار دوره متوالی پرورش در یک واحد پرورش مرغ تخم گذار صورت گرفت. روش های داده-کاوی شامل رگرسیون خطی و غیر خطی، شبکه عصبی پرسپترون سه لایه، شبکه عصبی پرسپترون چهار لایه و شبکه عصبی با تابع پایه ای شعاعی بود. در این مدل ها از متغیرهای سن گله، میزان خوراک مصرفی و فصل تولید به عنوان متغیر پیشگو و شاخص های عملکرد تولیدی شامل درصد تخم-گذاری، وزن توده ای تخم مرغ تولیدی و ضریب تبدیل غذایی به عنوان متغیر پاسخ استفاده شد. نتایج نهایی رگرسیون های خطی نشان داد که برای تمامی متغیرهای وابسته مورد مطالعه متغیر مستقل سن گله معنی دار می باشد. بنابراین رگرسیون غیر خطی شاخص های عملکرد تولیدی در مقابل سن برای مقایسه با شبکه های عصبی مختلف مورد بررسی قرار گرفت و برای مقایسه کلیه مدل ها از ضریب تعیین (R2) و میانگین قدر مطلق خطا (MAE) استفاده شد. نتایج نشان داد بین شبکه های عصبی مصنوعی مختلف مورد مطالعه، شبکه با تابع پایه ای شعاعی بهتر از سایر مدل های در پیش‌بینی شاخص های عملکرد تولیدی مرغان تخم گذار عمل می کند.

Castellated steel beams (CSB) are an attractive option for the steel construction industry thanks to outstanding advantages, such as the ability to exceed large span, lightweight, and allowing flexible arrangement of the technical pipes through beams. In addition, the complex localized and global failures characterizing these structural members have led researchers to focus on the development of efficient design guidelines. This paper aims to propose an artificial neural network (ANN) model with optimal architecture to predict the load‐carrying capacity of CSB with a scheme of the simple beam bearing load located at the center of the beam. The ANN model is built with 9 input variables, which are essential parameters equivalent to the geometrical properties and mechanical properties of the material, such as the overall depth of the castellated beam, the vertical projection of the inclined side of the opening, the web thickness, the flange width, the flange thickness, the width of web post at middepth, the horizontal projection of inclined side of the opening, the minimum web yield stress, and the minimum flange yield stress. The output variable is the load‐carrying capacity of the CSB. With the optimal ANN architecture [9‐1‐1] containing one hidden layer, the performance of the ANN model is evaluated based on statistical criteria such as R2, RMSE, and MAE. The results show that the optimal ANN model is a highly effective predictor of the load‐carrying capacity of the CSB with the best value of R2 = 0.989, RMSE = 3.328, and MAE = 2.620 for the testing part. The ANN model seems to be the best algorithm of machine learning for predicting the CSB load‐carrying capacity.

The power capacity of solar photovoltaics (PVs) in Korea has grown dramatically in recent years, and an accurate estimation of solar resources is crucial for the efficient management of these solar PV systems. Since the number of solar irradiance measurement sites is insufficient for Korea, satellite images can be useful sources for estimating solar irradiance over a wide area of Korea. In this study, an artificial neural network (ANN) model was constructed to calculate hourly global horizontal solar irradiance (GHI) from Korea Communication, Ocean and Meteorological Satellite (COMS) Meteorological Imager (MI) images. Solar position variables and five COMS MI channels were used as inputs for the ANN model. The basic ANN model was determined to have a window size of five for the input satellite images and two hidden layers, with 30 nodes on each hidden layer. After these ANN parameters were determined, the temporal and spatial applicability of the ANN model for solar irradiance mapping was validated. The final ANN ensemble model, which calculated the hourly GHI from 10 independent ANN models, exhibited a correlation coefficient (R) of 0.975 and root mean square error (RMSE) of 54.44 W/m² (12.93%), which were better results than for other remote-sensing based works for Korea. Finally, GHI maps for Korea were generated using the final ANN ensemble model. This COMS-based ANN model can contribute to the efficient estimation of solar resources and the improvement of the operational efficiency of solar PV systems for Korea.

Purpose – This paper aims to predict the needle penetration force (NPF) in denim fabrics using the artificial neural network (ANN) and multiple linear regression (MLR) models based on the effects of various sewing parameters. Design/methodology/approach – In order to design the ANN and MLR models, four parameters including fabric weight, number of fabric layers, weave pattern, and sewing needle size are taken into account as the input parameters and NPF as the output parameter. According to these parameters, 140 samples of data were resulted. Each sample was tested five times. From these 140 data (input-output data pairs), 112 were used for training the ANN and MLR models and 28 samples were used to test the performance of ANN and MLR. Also, the NPF was measured on the Instron tensile tester to simulate sewing process. Findings – The results indicated that the NPF in denim fabrics can be well predicted in terms of sewing parameters by using ANN and MLR models, in which the ANN model exhibits greater performance than MLR (RANN=0.989> RMLR=0.901). Research limitations/implications – The NPF measurement method is limited at low speed. Originality/value – Using the ANN model for forecasting NPF in denim fabrics can help the garment manufactures to produce high-quality denim products and improve the sewing process through reducing seam damage. The NPF could be also measured in the cycle loading conditions similar to sewing machine process by using a special designed tools mounted on the Instron tensile tester.

The purpose of this study was to validate the use of artificial neural network (ANN) models for predicting quality of life (QOL) after breast cancer surgery and to compare the predictive capability of ANNs with that of linear regression (LR) models. The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire and its supplementary breast cancer measure were completed by 402 breast cancer patients at baseline and at 2 years postoperatively. The accuracy of the system models were evaluated in terms of mean square error (MSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). A global sensitivity analysis was also performed to assess the relative significance of input parameters in the system model and to rank the variables in order of importance. Compared to the LR model, the ANN model generally had smaller MSE and MAPE values in both the training and testing datasets. Most ANN models had MAPE values ranging from 4.70 to 19.96 %, and most had high prediction accuracy. The ANN model also outperformed the LR model in terms of prediction accuracy. According to global sensitivity analysis, pre-operative functional status was the best predictor of QOL after surgery. Compared with the conventional LR model, the ANN model in the study was more accurate for predicting patient-reported QOL and had higher overall performance indices. Further refinements are expected to obtain sufficient performance improvements for its routine use in clinical practice as an adjunctive decision-making tool.

Nitric acid production plants emit small amounts of nitrogen oxides (NOx) to the environment. As the regulatory authorities demand the reduction of the resulting air pollution, existing plants are looking for economical ways to comply with this demand. Several Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) models were trained from several months of operating plant data to predict the NOx concentration in the tail gas, and their total amount emitted the environment. The training of the ANN model was done by the Guterman-Boger algorithm set that generates a non-random initial connection weights, suggests a small number of hidden neurons, avoids, and escapes from, local minima encountered during the training. The ANN models gave small errors, 0.6% relative error on the NOx concentration prediction and 0.006 kg/hour on daily emission in the 20-45 kg NOx/hour range. Knowledge extraction from the trained ANN models revealed the underlying relationships between the plant operating variables and the NOx emission rate, especially the beneficial effect of cooling the absorbed gas and reticulating liquids in the absorption towers. Clustering the data by the patterns of the hidden neurons outputs of auto-associative ANN models of the same data revealed interesting insights.