A Multistream Concept Drift Handling Framework via Data Sharing.

Concept drift referring to the changes of data distributions has been one critical challenge typically associated with mining data streams. Current drift detection and adaptation methods focus on how to immediately detect the distribution changes once the concept drift occurs and swiftly update the model to be applicable to the newly arrived data instances. Most of those methods assume the data does not have noise or the noise is too weak to affect the modeling procedure. However, realworld data are normally contaminated, and denoise techniques are highly preferred as a necessary preprocess. This issue is more complex for a data stream with concept drift because the noise is very likely to be confused with drift. Motivated by that, this paper proposes a Noise-tolerant Fuzzy c-means based drift Adaptation method (NFA) which can adapt to the changing distributions and is suitable for noisy data streams. The concept drift problem is solved by using a fuzzy c-means based regression model to continuously include the most relevant data instances to the latest pattern in the training set. In addition, a denoise technique is designed in NFA to remove noise, and the ability of incremental updating enables it to be embedded in the incremental drift adaptation process, and therefore NFA can solve concept drift and noise problems at the same time. Experimental evaluation results also show good performance of our method on handling data streams with concept drift and noise.

Anomaly detection in streaming data is an important task for many real-world applications, such as network security, fraud detection, and system monitoring. However, streaming data often exhibit concept drift, which means that the data distribution changes over time. This poses a significant challenge for many anomaly detection algorithms, as they need to adapt to the evolving data to maintain high detection accuracy. Existing streaming anomaly detection algorithms lack a unified evaluation framework that validly assesses their performance and robustness under different types of concept drifts and anomalies. In this paper, we conduct a systematic technical review of the state-of-the-art methods for anomaly detection in streaming data. We propose a new data generator, called SCAR (Streaming data generator with Customizable Anomalies and concept dRifts), that can synthesize streaming data based on synthetic and real-world datasets from different domains. Furthermore, we adapt four static anomaly detection models to the streaming setting using a generic reconstruction strategy as baselines, and then compare them systematically with 9 existing streaming anomaly detection algorithms on 76 synthesized datasets that have various types of anomalies and concept drifts. The challenges and future research directions for anomaly detection in streaming data are also presented.

The advances in computing software, hardware, connected devices and wireless communication infrastructure in recent years have led to the desire to work with streaming data sources. Yet the number of techniques, approaches and algorithms which can work with data from a streaming source is still very limited, compared with batched data. Although data mining techniques have been a well-studied topic of knowledge discovery for decades, many unique properties as well as challenges in learning from a data stream have not been considered properly due to the actual presence of and the real needs to mine information from streaming data sources. This thesis aims to contribute to the knowledge by developing a rule-based algorithm to specifically learn classification rules from data streams, with the learned rules are expressive so that a human user can easily interpret the concept and rationale behind the predictions of the created model. There are two main structures to represent a classification model; the ‘tree-based’ structure and the ‘rule-based’ structure. Even though both forms of representation are popular and well-known in traditional data mining, they are different when it comes to interpretability and quality of models in certain circumstances. The first part of this thesis analyses background work and relevant topics in learning classification rules from data streams. This study provides information about the essential requirements to produce high quality classification rules from data streams and how many systems, algorithms and techniques related to learn the classification of a static dataset are not applicable in a streaming environment. The second part of the thesis investigates at a new technique to improve the efficiency and accuracy in learning heuristics from numeric features from a streaming data source. The computational cost is one of the important factors to be considered for an effective and practical learning algorithm/system because of the needs to learn from continuous arrivals of data examples sequentially and discard the seen data examples. If the computing cost is too expensive, then one may not be able to keep pace with the arrival of high velocity and possibly unbound data streams. The proposed technique was first discussed in the context of the use of Gaussian distribution as heuristics for building rule terms on numeric features. Secondly, empirical evaluation shows the successful integration of the proposed technique into an existing rule-based algorithm for the data stream, eRules. Continuing on the topic of a rule-based algorithm for classification data streams, the use of Hoeffding’s Inequality addresses another problem in learning from a data stream, namely how much data should be seen from a data stream before starting learning and how to keep the model updated over time. By incorporating the theory from Hoeffding’s Inequality, this study presents the Hoeffding Rules algorithm, which can induce modular rules directly from a streaming data source with dynamic window sizes throughout the learning period to ensure the efficiency and robustness towards the concept drifts. Concept drift is another unique challenge in mining data streams which the underlying concept of the data can change either gradually or abruptly over time and the learner should adapt to these changes as quickly as possible. This research focuses on the development of a rule-based algorithm, Hoeffding Rules, for data stream which considers streaming environments as primary data sources and addresses several unique challenges in learning rules from data streams such as concept drifts and computational efficiency. This knowledge facilitates the need and the importance of an interpretable machine learning model; applying new studies to improve the ability to mine useful insights from potentially high velocity, high volume and unbounded data streams. More broadly, this research complements the study in learning classification rules from data streams to address some of the unique challenges in data streams compared with conventional batch data, with the knowledge necessary to systematically and effectively learn expressive and modular classification rules from data streams.

Recent research shows that rule based models perform well while classifying large data sets such as data streams with concept drifts. A genetic algorithm is a strong rule based classification algorithm which is used only for mining static small data sets. If the genetic algorithm can be made scalable and adaptable by reducing its I/O intensity, it will become an efficient and effective tool for mining large data sets like data streams. In this paper a scalable and adaptable online genetic algorithm is proposed to mine classification rules for the data streams with concept drifts. Since the data streams are generated continuously in a rapid rate, the proposed method does not use a fixed static data set for fitness calculation. Instead, it extracts a small snapshot of the training example from the current part of data stream whenever data is required for the fitness calculation. The proposed method also builds rules for all the classes separately in a parallel independent iterative manner. This makes the proposed method scalable to the data streams and also adaptable to the concept drifts that occur in the data stream in a fast and more natural way without storing the whole stream or a part of the stream in a compressed form as done by the other rule based algorithms. The results of the proposed method are comparable with the other standard methods which are used for mining the data streams.

Machine learning algorithms have been widely used in IoT application systems for predicting labels of input data streams from IoT sensors. Since data streams are not always stationary in real-world scenarios, underlying data distribution changes may cause a deterioration of the prediction performance that is known as concept drift. Existing concept drift detection methods often assume that complete and true labels for detecting the prediction errors are always available immediately after the prediction. However, such an assumption is not realistic in real IoT application systems. This paper experimentally investigates the robustness of six representative concept drift detectors against unreliable data streams containing the data with error labels and the data with no labels. Robustness is evaluated in terms of the average detection delay and precision by increasing the ratios of error-labeled and missing-label data in a synthetic data stream. Our experimental results show that Cumulative Sum (CUSUM), Page-Hinkley (PH), and Drift Detection Method (DDM) achieve relatively stable performances when the ratio of error-labeled data is less than 40%. With respect to the drift detection efficiency, CUSUM can be regarded as the most robust detector among other detectors tested in our experiments.

In evolving data stream, when its concept undergoes a change it is known as concept drift. Detecting concept drift and handling it is a challenging task in data stream mining. If an algorithm is not adapted to concept drift, then it directly affects its performance. A number of algorithms have been developed to handle concept drift, but they are not suited for both sudden concept drift and gradual concept drift. Thus, there is a demand for an algorithm that can react to both the types of concept drift as well as incur less computational cost. A new approach hybrid early drift detection method (HEDDM) has been proposed for drift detection, which works with an ensemble method to improve the performance.

Many real-world applications adopt multi-label data streams as the need for algorithms to deal with rapidly changing data increases. Changes in data distribution, also known as concept drift, cause existing classification models to rapidly lose their effectiveness. To assist the classifiers, we propose a novel algorithm called Label Dependency Drift Detector (LD3), an unsupervised concept drift detector using label dependencies within the data for multi-label data streams. Our study exploits the dynamic temporal dependencies between labels using a label influence ranking method, which leverages a data fusion algorithm and uses the produced ranking to detect concept drift. LD3 is the first unsupervised concept drift detection algorithm in the multi-label classification problem area. In this study, we perform an extensive evaluation of LD3 by comparing it with 14 prevalent supervised concept drift detection algorithms that we adapt to the problem area using 15 datasets and a baseline classifier. The results show that LD3 provides between 16.9 and 56% better predictive performance than comparable detectors on both real-world and synthetic data streams.

In real-time streaming data, concept drift and class imbalance may occur simultaneously which causes the performance degradation of the online machine learning models. Most of the existing work is limited to addressing these issues for binary class data streams. Very little focus is given to the multi-class data streams. The most common approach to address these issues is ensemble learning. Ensemble learning consists of multiple classifiers combined which are trained on different subsets of the data to improve the overall accuracy. The performance of the ensemble learning approach suffers in case the new classifier is not trained on appropriate data (the data about the new concept). To address this gap, this study has proposed a Smart Adaptive Ensemble Model (SAEM) to address the issues of concept drift and class imbalance for multi-class data streams. The SAEM monitors the feature-level change in data distribution and creates a background ensemble to train the new classifier on features that observe change. To address the class imbalance issue, SAEM applies higher weights on the minority class instances using the dynamic class imbalance ratio. The proposed model outperformed the existing state-of-the-art approaches on the eight different data streams. The results showed an average improvement of 15.857% in accuracy, 20.35% in Kappa, 16.12% in F1-score, 15.58% in precision, and 16.42% in recall. The Friedman test confirmed statistically significant performance differences among all models across five key metrics. Based on the obtained results, the research findings strongly support the notion that SAEM exhibits enhanced effectiveness and efficiency as a solution for online learning applications.

New challenges have emerged in data mining as the traditional techniques have floundered with real-time data streams. The traditional technique needs refurbishing so as to acclimatize with concept drifting data streams. Thus dealing with the concept changes is the most imperative task of stream data mining. Ensemble classifiers have the ability to automatically adapt with the incoming drifts and, therefore, it is the most interesting research area in data stream mining. Bagging, Boosting and Random forest generation are the common ensemble techniques and are the most popular machine learning approaches in the current scenario for static data (Gomes HM, Bifet A, Read J, Barddal JP, Enembreck F, Pfharinger B, Abdessalem T (2017) Adaptive random forests for evolving data stream classification. Mach Learn 106(9–10):469–1495, [1]). A large number of base classifiers in an ensemble can cause computational overhead. Data mining classifiers for real-time data streams, therefore, need to be updated constantly and retrained with the labeled instances of the newly arrived novel classes in data streams and to cope with concept drift; otherwise, the mining models will become less and less accurate as time passes by. However, for data streams, adaptive random forest algorithms have been widely used for ensemble generation due to its competence to handle different types of drifts. This paper proposes a modified adaptive random forest with meta level learner algorithm and concept adaptive very fast decision tree to overcome the concept drift problem in real-time data streams. The proposed algorithm is experimentally compared with state-of-the-art adaptive random forest algorithm on several real synthetic datasets. Results indicate its efficiency in terms of accuracy and processing time.

Aim/Purpose: This paper describes how to use a multilayer perceptron to improve concept drift recovery in streaming environments. Background: Classifying instances in a data stream environment with concept drift is a challenging topic. The base learner must be adapted online to the current data. Several data mining algorithms have been adapted/used to this type of environment. In this study, two techniques are used to speed up the adaptation of an artificial neural network to the current data, increasing its predictive accuracy while detecting the concept drift sooner. Methodology: Experiments were performed to analyze how some techniques behave in different scenarios and compare them with other classifiers built to deal with data streams and concept drifts. Contribution: This study suggests two techniques to improve the classification results: an embedded concept drift detection method to identify when a change has occurred and setting the learning rate to a higher level whenever a new concept is being learned to give more weight to recent instances, with its value decreased over time. Findings: Results indicate that gradually reducing the learning rate with an embedded concept drift detector has better statistical results than other single classifiers built to deal with data streams and concept drifts. Recommendations for Practitioners: Based on the empirical results, this study provides recommendations on how to improve the multilayer perceptron in data stream environments suffering from concept drifts. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers should conduct investigations to increase the number of base classifiers used in data stream environments and in situations where concept drifts occur. Impact on Society: The objective of this study is to increase the use of multilayer perceptrons in data stream environments suffering from concept drifts, as nowadays, Hoeffding Trees and Naive Bayes are the base classifiers mostly used. Future Research: Additional research includes adapting the online learning rate by increasing/decreasing it based on the performance of the Multilayer Perceptron. This scheme would allow the removal of parameters that must be set by the user, like learning rate upper bound and number of instances to return to the stable value.

Concept drift, the phenomenon where the underlying data distribution changes over time, presents significant challenges for machine learning models deployed in realtime applications. This issue is particularly pronounced in high-dimensional data streams, where the complexity of monitoring and adapting to these changes can lead to decreased model performance and reliability. This literature review examines existing research on concept drift in high-dimensional data environments, exploring the causes, detection methods and techniques for adaptation. We delve into classical statistical approaches, machine learning and deep learning-based methods, and discuss the inherent challenges posed by highdimensionality. Additionally, in this paper highlight evaluation metrics, benchmark datasets, and a comparative analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of current techniques. This paper concludes with potential future research directions, emphasizing the importance of scalable, adaptive and hybrid approaches to tackle concept drift effectively in high-dimensional data streams.

Long short-term memory self-adapting online random forests for evolving data stream regression

As the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and systems have surged, IoT data analytics techniques have been developed to detect malicious cyber-attacks and secure IoT systems; however, concept drift issues often occur in IoT data analytics, as IoT data is often dynamic data streams that change over time, causing model degradation and attack detection failure. This is because traditional data analytics models are static models that cannot adapt to data distribution changes. In this paper, we propose a Performance Weighted Probability Averaging Ensemble (PWPAE) framework for drift adaptive IoT anomaly detection through IoT data stream analytics. Experiments on two public datasets show the effectiveness of our proposed PWPAE method compared against state-of-the-art methods.

Data streams may encounter data distribution changes, which can significantly impair the accuracy of models. Concept drift detection tracks data distribution changes and signals when to update models. Many drift detection methods apply thresholds to distinguish between drift or non-drift streams and to claim their method outperforms others with non-aligned drift thresholds. We consider that selecting a proper drift threshold could be more important than developing a new drift detection algorithm, and different drift detection algorithms may end up with very similar performance with aligned drift thresholds. To better understand this process, we propose a novel threshold selection algorithm to align the drift thresholds of a set of algorithms so that they are all at the same sensitivity level. Based on comprehensive experiment evaluations, we observed that several state-of-the-art drift detection algorithms could achieve similar results by aligning their thresholds, providing a novel insight to explain how drift detection algorithms contribute to data stream learning. We noticed that a higher detection sensitivity improves accuracy for data streams with frequent distribution change. The evaluation results are showing that drift thresholds should not be fixed during stream learning. Rather, they should adjust dynamically based on the prevailing conditions of the data stream.

The major challenge in mining data streams is the issue of concept drift, the tendency of the underlying data generation process to change over time. In this paper, we propose a general rule learning framework that can efficiently handle concept-drifting data streams and maintain a highly accurate classification model. The main idea is to focus on partial drifts by allowing individual rules to monitor the stream and detect if there is a drift in the regions they cover. A rule quality measure then decides whether the affected rules are inconsistent with the concept drift. The model is accordingly updated to only include rules that are consistent with the newly arrived concept. A dynamically maintained set of instances deemed relevant to the most recent concept is also kept at memory. Learning a new concept from a larger set of instances reduces the variance of data distribution and allows for a more accurate, stable classification model. Our experiments show that this approach not only handles the drift efficiently, but it also can provide higher classification accuracy compared to other competitive approaches on a variety of real and synthetic data sets.