Search Results (2,252)

In the wave of digital transformation and Industry 4.0, accurate time series forecasting has become critical across industries such as manufacturing, energy, and finance. However, while deep learning models offer high predictive accuracy, their lack of interpretability often undermines decision-makers’ trust. This study proposes a linear time series model architecture based on seasonal decomposition. The model effectively captures trends and seasonality using an additive decomposition, chosen based on initial data visualization, indicating stable seasonal variations. An augmented feature generator is introduced to enhance predictive performance by generating features such as differences, rolling statistics, and moving averages. Furthermore, we propose a gradient-based feature importance method to improve interpretability and implement a gradient feature elimination algorithm to reduce noise and enhance model accuracy. The approach is validated on multiple datasets, including order demand, energy load, and solar radiation, demonstrating its applicability to diverse time series forecasting tasks. Full article

In recent years, Out-of-Stock (OOS) occurrences have posed a persistent challenge for both retailers and manufacturers. In the context of grocery retail, an OOS event represents a situation where customers are unable to locate a specific product when attempting to make a purchase. This study analyzes the issue from the manufacturer’s perspective. The proposed system, named the “Multi-modal yield eSTimation System of in-prOmotion Commercial Key-ProductS” (MySTOCKS) platform, is a sophisticated multi-modal yield estimation system designed to optimize inventory forecasting for the agrifood and large-scale retail sectors, particularly during promotional periods. MySTOCKS addresses the complexities of inventory management in settings where Out-of-Stock (OOS) and Surplus-of-Stock (SOS) situations frequently arise, offering predictive insights into final stock levels across defined forecasting intervals to support sustainable resource management. Unlike traditional approaches, MySTOCKS leverages an advanced deep learning framework that incorporates transformer models with self-attention mechanisms and domain adaptation capabilities, enabling accurate temporal and spatial modeling tailored to the dynamic requirements of the agrifood supply chain. The system includes two distinct forecasting modules: TR1, designed for standard stock-level estimation, and TR2, which focuses on elevated demand periods during promotions. Additionally, MySTOCKS integrates Elastic Weight Consolidation (EWC) to mitigate the effects of catastrophic forgetting, thus enhancing predictive accuracy amidst changing data patterns. Preliminary results indicate high system performance, with test accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity rates approximating 93.8%. This paper provides an in-depth examination of the MySTOCKS platform’s modular structure, data-processing workflow, and its broader implications for sustainable and economically efficient inventory management within agrifood and large-scale retail environments. Full article

The power-generation mix of future grids will be quite diversified with the ever-increasing share of renewable energy technologies. Therefore, the prediction of electricity demand will become crucial for resource optimization and grid stability. Machine learning- and artificial intelligence-based methods are widely studied by researchers to tackle the demand forecasting problem. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, new challenges have surfaced for forecasting research. In such a short amount of time, significant shifts have emerged in electricity demand trends, making it apparent that the pandemic and the possibility of similar crises in the future have escalated the complexity of energy management problems. Motivated by the circumstances, this research presents an hour-ahead and day-ahead electricity demand forecasting benchmark using Deep Polynomial Neural Networks (DNN) and Gene Expression Programming (GEP) methods. The DNN and GEP algorithms utilize on-site electricity consumption data collected from a university hospital for over two years with a temporal granularity of 15-minute intervals. Quarter-hourly meteorological, calendar, and daily COVID-19 data, including new cases and cumulative cases divided by four restriction levels, were also considered. These datasets are used not only to predict the electricity demand but also to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the electricity consumption of the hospital. The hour-ahead and day-ahead nRMSE results show that the DNN outperforms the GEP by $8.27\%$ and $14.32\%$, respectively. For the computational times, the DNN appears to be much faster than the GEP by $82.83\%$ and $78.56\%$ in the hour-ahead and day-ahead forecasting, respectively. Full article

The global demand for clean and sustainable energy has driven the rapid growth of wind power. However, wind farm managers face the challenge of forecasting wind power for efficient power generation and management. Accurate wind speed forecasting (WSF) is vital for predicting wind power; yet, the variability and intermittency of the wind make forecasting wind speeds difficult. Consequently, WSF remains a challenging area of wind research, driving continuous improvement in the field. This study aimed to enhance the optimization of multifeature-driven short multistep WSF. The primary contributions of this research include the integration of ReliefF feature selection (RFFS), a novel approach to variational mode decomposition for multifeature decomposition (NAMD), and a recursive non-linear autoregressive with exogenous inputs (NARXR) neural network. In particular, RFFS aids in identifying meteorological features that significantly influence wind speed variations, thus ensuring the selection of the most impactful features; NAMD improves the accuracy of neural network training on historical data; and NARXR enhances the overall robustness and stability of the wind speed forecasting results. The experimental results demonstrate that the predictive accuracy of the proposed NAMD–NARXR hybrid model surpasses that of the models used for comparison, as evidenced by the forecasting error and statistical metrics. Integrating the strengths of RFFS, NAMD, and NARXR enhanced the forecasting performance of the proposed NAMD–NARXR model, highlighting its potential suitability for applications requiring multifeature-driven short-term multistep WSF. Full article

Smart farming leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to address modern agricultural sustainability challenges. This study investigates the application of machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), and time series analysis in agriculture through a systematic literature review following the PRISMA methodology. The review highlights the critical roles of ML and DL techniques in optimizing agricultural processes, such as crop selection, yield prediction, soil compatibility classification, and water management. ML algorithms facilitate tasks like crop selection and soil fertility classification, while DL techniques contribute to forecasting crop production and commodity prices. Additionally, time series analysis is employed for demand forecasting of crops, commodity price prediction, and forecasting crop yield production. The focus of this article is to provide a comprehensive overview of ML and DL techniques within the farming industry. Utilizing crop datasets, ML algorithms are instrumental in classifying soil fertility, crop selection, and various other aspects. DL algorithms, when applied to farming data, enable effective time series analysis and crop selection. By synthesizing the integration of these technologies, this review underscores their potential to enhance decision-making in agriculture and mitigate food scarcity challenges in the future. Full article

Hydrology relates to many complex challenges due to climate variability, limited resources, and especially, increased demands on sustainable management of water and soil. Conventional approaches often cannot respond to the integrated complexity and continuous change inherent in the water system; hence, researchers have explored advanced data-driven solutions. This review paper revisits how artificial intelligence (AI) is dramatically changing the most important facets of hydrological research, including soil and land surface modeling, streamflow, groundwater forecasting, water quality assessment, and remote sensing applications in water resources. In soil and land modeling, AI techniques could further enhance accuracy in soil texture analysis, moisture estimation, and erosion prediction for better land management. Advanced AI models could also be used as a tool to forecast streamflow and groundwater levels, therefore providing valuable lead times for flood preparedness and water resource planning in transboundary basins. In water quality, AI-driven methods improve contamination risk assessment, enable the detection of anomalies, and track pollutants to assist in water treatment processes and regulatory practices. AI techniques combined with remote sensing open new perspectives on monitoring water resources at a spatial scale, from flood forecasting to groundwater storage variations. This paper’s synthesis emphasizes AI’s immense potential in hydrology; it also covers the latest advances and future prospects of the field to ensure sustainable water and soil management. Full article

The advent of Industry 4.0 and the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming supply chain management (SCM), improving efficiency, resilience and strategic decision-making capabilities. This research study provides a comprehensive overview of AI applications in key SCM processes, including customer relationship management, inventory management, transportation networks, procurement, demand forecasting and risk management. AI technologies such as Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Generative AI offer transformative solutions to streamline logistics, reduce operational risk and improve demand forecasting. In addition, this study identifies barriers to AI adoption, such as implementation challenges, organizational readiness and ethical concerns, and highlights the critical role of AI in promoting supply chain visibility and resilience in the midst of global crises. Future trends emphasize human-centric AI, increasing digital maturity, and addressing ethical and security concerns. This review concludes by confirming the critical role of AI in shaping sustainable, flexible and resilient supply chains while providing a roadmap for future research and application in SCM. Full article

This paper presents the optimization sizing of a battery energy storage system for residential use from load forecasting using AI. The solar rooftop panel installation and charging systems for electric vehicles are connected to the low-voltage electrical system of the Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA). The daily electricity demand for future load forecasting used the long short-term memory (LSTM) technique in order to analyze the appropriate size of the battery energy storage system (BESS) for residences. The solar rooftop installation capacity is 5.5 kWp, which produces an average of 28.78 kWh/day. The minimum actual daily load in a month is 67.04 kWh, comprising the base load and the load from charging electric vehicles, which can determine the size of the battery energy storage system as 21.03 kWh. For this research, load forecasting will be presented to find the appropriate size of BESS by considering the minimum daily load over the month, which is equal to 102.67 kWh, which can determine the size of the BESS to be 17.84 kWh. When comparing the size of BESS from actual load values with the load from the forecast, it can significantly reduce the size and cost of BESS. Full article

This paper introduces a novel hybrid forecasting model for tourism demand that combines Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) and Transformer networks, addressing the challenge of capturing both short-term fluctuations and long-term trends in complex tourism data. Unlike traditional models, such as ARIMA, which often struggle with nonlinear patterns, our hybrid approach leverages the sequential learning capabilities of BiLSTM and the self-attention mechanism of the Transformer to effectively model intricate temporal dependencies. Our experiments on Thailand’s domestic tourism data showed that the hybrid model outperformed traditional methods and standalone deep learning models, where it achieved a 12% reduction in the RMSE, a 15% reduction in the MAE, and a 10% increase in the $R^2$. This improved accuracy offers significant practical benefits for sustainable tourism, enabling policymakers and tourism managers to optimize resource allocation, anticipate peak season demand, and develop strategies to mitigate over-tourism. The model’s robustness and adaptability make it a valuable tool for data-driven decision-making in the tourism sector. Full article

Cloud computing offers scalable and adaptable resources on demand, and has emerged as an essential technology for contemporary enterprises. Nevertheless, it is still challenging work to efficiently handle cloud resources because of dynamic changes in load requirement. Existing forecasting approaches are unable to handle the intricate temporal symmetries and nonlinear patterns in cloud workload data, leading to degradation of prediction accuracy. In this manuscript, a Symmetry-Aware Multi-Dimensional Attention Spiking Neural Network with Optimization Techniques for Accurate Workload and Resource Time Series Prediction in Cloud Computing Systems (MASNN-WL-RTSP-CS) is proposed. Here, the input data from the Google cluster trace dataset were preprocessed using Multi Window Savitzky–Golay Filter (MWSGF) to remove noise while preserving important data patterns and maintaining structural symmetry in time series trends. Then, the Multi-Dimensional Attention Spiking Neural Network (MASNN) effectively models symmetric patterns in workload fluctuations to predict workload and resource time series. To enhance accuracy, the Secretary Bird Optimization Algorithm (SBOA) was utilized to optimize the MASNN parameters, ensuring accurate workload and resource time series predictions. Experimental results show that the MASNN-WL-RTSP-CS method achieves 35.66%, 32.73%, and 31.43% lower Root Mean Squared Logarithmic Error (RMSLE), 25.49%, 32.77%, and 28.93% lower Mean Square Error (MSE), and 24.54%, 23.65%, and 23.62% lower Mean Absolute Error (MAE) compared with other approaches, like ICNN-WL-RP-CS, PA-ENN-WLP-CS, and DCRNN-RUP-RP-CCE, respectively. These advances emphasize the utility of MASNN-WL-RTSP-CS in achieving more accurate workload and resource forecasts, thereby facilitating effective cloud resource management. Full article

The rapid evolution of financial markets and technological advancements has significantly impacted the field of accounting, creating a demand for innovative approaches to financial forecasting and decision making. Our research addresses contemporary socio-economic needs within the accounting domain, particularly the growing reliance on automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the accuracy of financial projections and improve operational efficiency and proposes a theoretical and empirical framework for applying neural networks to predict corporate profitability, using key accounting variables. The proposed model operates on two distinct levels. At the theoretical level, we defined the conceptual relationship between accounting constructs and profitability, proposing that shifts in financial metrics directly influence the net income. This relationship is grounded in established accounting theory and is operationalized through financial ratios and indicators, creating a clear, semantically linked framework. At the empirical level, these abstract concepts can be reified into measurable variables, where a multi-layered neural network can be deployed to uncover complex, nonlinear relationships between the input data and predicted profit. Through iterative training and testing, the model can provide plausible predictions, validated by historical financial data. We are taking time-honored accounting principles and combining them with cutting-edge technology to predict profitability in ways that have not been possible before. The hope is that by embracing this new approach, we can make financial predictions more accurate, support better strategic decision making, and, ultimately, help businesses navigate the complexities of modern financial markets. This research addresses the growing need for advanced financial forecasting tools by applying neural networks to accounting. By combining theoretical accounting principles with cutting-edge machine learning techniques, we aim to demonstrate that neural networks can bridge the gap between traditional accounting practices and the increasing demands for predictive accuracy and strategic decision making in a rapidly evolving financial environment. Full article

Accurate demand forecasting is essential for retail operations as it directly impacts supply chain efficiency, inventory management, and financial performance. However, forecasting retail time series presents significant challenges due to their irregular patterns, hierarchical structures, and strong dependence on external factors such as promotions, pricing strategies, and socio-economic conditions. This study evaluates the effectiveness of Transformer-based architectures, specifically Vanilla Transformer, Informer, Autoformer, ETSformer, NSTransformer, and Reformer, for probabilistic time series forecasting in retail. A key focus is the integration of explanatory variables, such as calendar-related indicators, selling prices, and socio-economic factors, which play a crucial role in capturing demand fluctuations. This study assesses how incorporating these variables enhances forecast accuracy, addressing a research gap in the comprehensive evaluation of explanatory variables within multiple Transformer-based models. Empirical results, based on the M5 dataset, show that incorporating explanatory variables generally improves forecasting performance. Models leveraging these variables achieve up to 12.4% reduction in Normalized Root Mean Squared Error (NRMSE) and 2.9% improvement in Mean Absolute Scaled Error (MASE) compared to models that rely solely on past sales. Furthermore, probabilistic forecasting enhances decision making by quantifying uncertainty, providing more reliable demand predictions for risk management. These findings underscore the effectiveness of Transformer-based models in retail forecasting and emphasize the importance of integrating domain-specific explanatory variables to achieve more accurate, context-aware predictions in dynamic retail environments. Full article

Today’s airport passenger terminals are required to be planned and designed to ensure flexibility for future adjustments at minimal cost, but also to respond to changes in demand and/or needs of passengers, airlines, and aircraft. To achieve these goals for airports and their operators, planning must be flexible and balanced. Recent data show that the airline business model of low-cost carriers continues to grow, especially after the pandemic. The analysis of the passenger traffic demand and shares of airline business models against the capacity of the existing airport terminal facilities can indicate whether certain adjustments are needed to meet the future conditions. In this research, forecasting of traffic demand and shares of airline business models was made. The forecasting tools of Python and MS Excel were used. Based on traffic demand forecasts and the dominant airline business model, guidelines for future airport terminal planning were proposed for the case-study airport. An example of the adjustment of airport terminal facilities at Pula Airport passenger terminal is provided using AutoCAD, according to forecasted traffic demand and the dominant share of low-cost carriers. Full article

Facing the decarbonization trend in power systems, there appears to be a growing requirement on agile response and delicate supply from electricity suppliers. To accommodate this request, it is of key significance to precisely extrapolate the upcoming power load, which is well acknowledged as VSTLF, i.e., Very Short-Term Power Load Forecasting. As a time series forecasting problem, the primary challenge of VSTLF is how to identify potential factors and their very long-term affecting mechanisms in load demands. With the help of a public dataset, this paper first locates several intensely related attributes based on Pearson’s correlation coefficient and then proposes an adaptive Informer network with the probability sparse attention to model the long-sequence power loads. Additionally, it uses the Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) for ablation and interpretation analysis. The experiment results show that the proposed model outperforms several state-of-the-art solutions on several metrics, e.g., 18.39% on RMSE, 21.70% on MAE, 21.24% on MAPE, and 2.11% on R². Full article

This study explores how digital technologies and data analytics can transform urban waste management in smart cities by addressing systemic inefficiencies. Integrating perspectives from the Resource-Based View, Socio-Technical Systems Theory, Circular Economy Theory, and Institutional Theory, the research examines sustainability, operational efficiency, and resilience in extended supply chains. A case study of Company A and its demand-side supply chain with Retailer B highlights key drivers of waste, including overstocking, inventory mismanagement, and inefficiencies in transportation and promotional activities. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combines quantitative analysis of operational data with advanced statistical techniques and machine learning models. Key data sources include inventory records, sales forecasts, promotional activities, waste logs, and IoT sensor data collected over a two-year period. Machine learning techniques were employed to uncover complex, non-linear relationships between waste drivers and waste generation. A waste-type-specific emissions framework was used to assess environmental impacts, while IoT-enabled optimization algorithms helped improve logistics efficiency and reduce waste collection costs. Our findings indicate that the adoption of IoT and AI technologies significantly reduced waste by enhancing inventory control, optimizing transportation, and improving supply chain coordination. These digital innovations also align with circular economy principles by minimizing resource consumption and emissions, contributing to broader sustainability and resilience goals in urban environments. The study underscores the importance of integrating digital solutions into waste management strategies to foster more sustainable and efficient urban supply chains. While the research is particularly relevant to the food production and retail sectors, it also provides valuable insights for policymakers, urban planners, and supply chain stakeholders. By bridging theoretical frameworks with practical applications, this study demonstrates the potential of digital technologies to drive sustainability and resilience in smart cities. Full article