Automated prediction system of household energy consumption in cities using web crawler and optimized artificial intelligence

The supply of electrical energy is critical to convenient and comfortable living. However, people consume a large amount of energy, contributing to an energy crisis and global warming, and damaging some ecological cycles. Residential electricity consumption has greater elasticity than industrial and business consumption; it therefore has high energy-saving potential. This work establishes an automated platform, which provides information about residential electricity consumption in each city in Taiwan. Machine learning was used to forecast future residential electricity demand. A nature-inspired optimization method was applied to enhance the accuracy of the best machine learner, yielding an even better hybrid ensemble model. Performance measures indicate that the resulting model is accurate and provides effective information for reference. An automatic web-based system based on the model was combined with a web crawler and scheduled to run automatically to provide information on monthly residential electricity consumption in each county and city. By providing energy consumption information across the country, power providers and government can discuss policy and set different goals for energy use. The results of this study can facilitate the early implementation of energy-saving and carbon emission-reducing in cities and aid utility companies in establishing energy conservation guidelines.     

Early-warning performance monitoring system (EPMS) using the business information of a project

An early-warning performance monitoring system (EPMS) is proposed to objectively measure and monitor the performance of a project for early detection of inherent poor performance problems. The EPMS is built based on project progress data and consists of a database of business information, an optimized theoretical model used as a performance measurement baseline, and an index for monitoring and forecasting the performance. By monitoring the performance through an application of the EPMS to the Korean construction project, the quarterly variation of index was found to differ by project type. These results could explain the environmental changes in the project execution. Therefore, the EPMS is expected to be an alternative for objective performance monitoring and forecasting while applying the existing methods is difficult because of the limited available data on performance indicators. The development procedures may also be useful to researchers interested in approaches to quantitatively analyze trends in various industries.     

基于负荷预测的0.4 kV配网低电压风险评估方法

我国现阶段的配电网网架结构依然十分薄弱,智能化水平低,缺乏先进的检测技术和高效的运维模式。在现阶段低压电气信息不开源的情况下,为解决0.4 kV配网无差别运维效率低的问题,文章分析了适用于低压配网状态评估的评价维度,并基于负荷预测结果提出了低压台区低电压风险评估方法,引入了微增容量所引起的压降比,实现对低电压风险的定期管控。该文对于优化低压配电网运维资源配置、指导低压配网差异化运维模式的建立,以及提高低压配电网运维整治效率具有一定的参考价值。     

Accuracy of wind energy forecasts in Great Britain and prospects for improvement

The metric representing the wind energy forecast error, when reported as a percent, is calculated quite differently than the error metrics for electricity transmission, electricity load, or in other industries such as manufacturing when they are also reported as a percent. The resulting calculated metric is quite different from what would be reported if the method utilized elsewhere was employed. This paper examines the possible forecast assessment and operational challenges associated with this finding. Concerning the prospects for improvement, the errors reported in MW of energy have a systematic component. With this insight, we developed a model to improve accuracy.     

基于需求预测的PaaS平台资源分配方法

针对缺乏PaaS平台下资源需求的有效预测与优化分配的问题，提出一种资源需求预测模型和分配方法。首先，根据PaaS平台中应用对资源需求的周期性来对资源序列进行切分，并在短期预测的基础上结合应用的多周期性特征，利用多元回归算法建立综合的预测模型。然后，基于MapReduce架构设计实现了一个Master-Slave模式的PaaS平台资源分配系统。最后，结合当前任务请求和资源需求预测结果进行资源分配。实验结果表明，采用该资源需求预测模型和分配方法后，相比于自回归模型和指数平滑算法，平均绝对百分比误差分别下降8.71个百分点和2.07个百分点，均方根误差分别下降2.01个百分点和0.46个百分点。所提预测模型的预测结果不仅误差小，与真实值的拟合程度也较高，而且利用较小的时间开销就可以获得较高的准确度。此外，使用该预测模型的PaaS平台的资源请求的平均等待时间有了明显的下降。     

Matching of technological forecasting technique to a technology using fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making methods: Case study from the aerospace industry

Given the accelerating pace of technological advances and environmental changes, technology-based companies are required to predict and understand future events in their environments. However, there is a wide range of forecasting methods creating confusion on which method to use. This paper demonstrates the selection of an appropriate technique for technology forecasting in the Iran Aviation Industries Organization (IAIO). To this end, a review of the literature was first reviewed to extract the proper criteria for selecting a forecasting method. Next, the SWARA and fuzzy MUTLIMOORA methods were used to evaluate and prioritize a total of twelve forecasting methods proposed for the case study. The results suggested that the Delphi method for technology forecasting in the IAIO. Scenario writing and the relevance tree are the next proper alternatives that can be used.     

基于VMD和改进TCN的短期光伏发电功率预测

光伏发电功率存在波动性,且光伏出力易受各种气象特征影响,传统TCN网络容易过度强化空间特性而弱化个体特性。针对上述问题,文中提出一种基于VMD和改进TCN的短期光伏发电功率预测模型。通过VMD将原始光伏发电功率时间序列分解为若干不同频率的模态分量,将各个模态分量以及相对应的气象数据输入至改进TCN网络进行建模学习。利用中心频率法确定VMD的最优分解模态分解个数。在传统TCN预测模型的基础上,使用DropBlock正则化取代Dropout正则化以达到抑制卷积层中信息协同的效果,并引入注意力机制自主挖掘并突出关键气象输入特征的影响,量化各气象因素对光伏发电的影响,从而提高预测精度。以江苏省某光伏电站真实数据为例进行仿真实验,结果表明所提预测方法的RMSE为0.62 MW,MAPE为2.03%。     

Machine Learning-Based Two-Stage Data Selection Scheme for Long-Term Influenza Forecasting

One popular strategy to reduce the enormous number of illnesses and deaths from a seasonal influenza pandemic is to obtain the influenza vaccine on time. Usually, vaccine production preparation must be done at least six months in advance, and accurate long-term influenza forecasting is essential for this. Although diverse machine learning models have been proposed for influenza forecasting, they focus on short-term forecasting, and their performance is too dependent on input variables. For a country’s long-term influenza forecasting, typical surveillance data are known to be more effective than diverse external data on the Internet. We propose a two-stage data selection scheme for worldwide surveillance data to construct a long-term forecasting model for influenza in the target country. In the first stage, using a simple forecasting model based on the country’s surveillance data, we measured the change in performance by adding surveillance data from other countries, shifted by up to 52 weeks. In the second stage, for each set of surveillance data sorted by accuracy, we incrementally added data as input if the data have a positive effect on the performance of the forecasting model in the first stage. Using the selected surveillance data, we trained a new long-term forecasting model for influenza and perform influenza forecasting for the target country. We conducted extensive experiments using six machine learning models for the three target countries to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. We report some of the results.     

Does the method for Military Utility Assessment of Future Technologies provide utility?

The Military Utility Assessment of Future Technologies (MUAFT) method was developed as a cost-efficient alternative to methods such as NATO's Disruptive Technology Assessment Games, to be used as a part of the Swedish Armed Forces' long-term capability development process. The question addressed in this study is whether MUAFT can be considered to have validity in its context and thus if it has potential to be useful to other small to medium size states. The analysis was based on an operationalization of Clark's framework for science and technology intelligence analysis, combined with a military capability centric view of military utility. MUAFT reports from 2012 to 2018 were reviewed in terms of how they satisfy five key criteria. The study shows that MUAFT provides utility, if used by a suitably composed group of experts, who are aware of the method's limitations. The limitations mainly originate from a lack of explicit support for assessing the impact of forces for change, other than technological forces, on military capability development. The expert group serves as the synthesizing bridge between technology forecasts and military utility assessments. Therefore, comprehensive expertise is needed in various military technology specialisations, in the sponsor's military capabilities and in subjects necessary to master in order to assess other influential societal forces for change.     

Deep reinforcement learning for selecting demand forecast models to empower Industry 3.5 and an empirical study for a semiconductor component distributor

A semiconductor distributor that plays a third-party role in the supply chain will buy diverse components from different suppliers, warehouse and resell them to a number of electronics manufacturers with vendor-managed inventories, while suffering both risks of oversupply and shortage due to demand uncertainty. However, demand fluctuation and supply chain complexity are increasing due to shortening product life cycle in the consumer electronics era and long lead time for capacity expansion for high-tech manufacturing. Focusing realistic needs of a leading distributor for semiconductor components and modules, this study aims to construct a UNISON framework based on deep reinforcement learning (RL) for dynamically selecting the optimal demand forecast model for each of the products with the corresponding demand patterns to empower smart production for Industry 3.5. Deep RL that integrates deep learning architecture and RL algorithm can learn successful policies from the dynamic and complex real world. The reward function mechanism of deep RL can reduce negative impact of demand uncertainty. An empirical study was conducted for validation showing practical viability of the proposed approach. Indeed, the developed solution has been in real settings.