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Analyzing lecturers' and students' satisfaction with using e-learning is important to improve the teaching-learning processes. The existing approaches have been widely employing machine learning algorithms, usage-based, and System Usability Scale (SUS) metrics based on users' opinions, activities, and usability testing, respectively. However, the usage-based and SUS metrics fail to cover users' opinions about e-learning systems and they involve manual features engineering. Whereas, the machine learning classifiers do not analyze satisfaction based on activities and usability. Toward this end, we propose a machine learning model that employs CNN and BiLSTM algorithms to concatenate the features extracted from users' activities, usability testing, and users' opinions. The proposed model is coined as E-learning Users' Satisfaction Detection (El-USD). Experimental results suggest that there is a significant correlation between satisfaction analysis by achieving an average r = 0.778. The evaluation results further suggest that our proposed approach can analyze users' satisfaction accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of the world population is leading to an increased demand for food production. Consequently, there is a need to update agricultural processes to enhance production. Smart farming has evolved as a farm management concept that leverages real-time, dependable, and site-specific agricultural information to ensure consistent and sustainable yields. This study focuses on soil nutrient analysis, specifically nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) for enhancing crop production. Maintaining an appropriate balance of NPK is crucial for the well-rounded nutrition of crops. Various environmental factors such as temperature, rainfall, humidity, and soil pH affect the NPK composition of agricultural land. The optimal usage of NPK levels can help to improve plant growth, increase crop yields, and enhance overall farm productivity. Hence, we have proposed a stack regressor learning algorithm comprising of two layers for accurate, reliable, and context-sensitive predictions of NPK levels. The proposed approach considers the combined impact of these environmental factors and predicts the optimal NPK requirements tailored to specific crops and agricultural land. The analysis of graphs demonstrates that the predictive accuracy of the proposed stacked regressor model far surpasses that of preexisting built-in machine learning models. This study helps farmers make informed decisions, leading to productivity and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to develop and validate a prediction model in-hospital mortality in critically ill patients with sepsis-associated acute kidney injury (SA-AKI) based on machine learning algorithms. Patients who met the criteria for inclusion were identified in the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-IV (MIMIC-IV) database and divided according to the validation (n = 2440) and development (n = 9756, 80%) queues. Ensemble stepwise feature selection method was used to screen for effective features. The prediction models of short-term mortality were developed by seven machine learning algorithms. Ten-fold cross-validation was used to verify the performance of the algorithm in the development queue. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC-AUC) was used to evaluate the differentiation accuracy and performance of the prediction model in the validation queue. The best-performing model was interpreted by Shapley additive explanations (SHAP). A total of 12,196 patients were enrolled in this study. Eleven variables were finally chosen to develop the prediction model. The AUC of the random forest (RF) model was the highest value both in the Ten-fold cross-validation and evaluation (AUC: 0.798, 95% CI: 0.774–0.821). According to the SHAP plots, old age, low Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score, high AKI stage, reduced urine output, high Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS II), high respiratory rate, low temperature, low absolute lymphocyte count, high creatinine level, dysnatremia, and low body mass index (BMI) increased the risk of poor prognosis. The RF model developed in this study is a good predictor of in-hospital mortality for patients with SA-AKI in the intensive care unit (ICU), which may have potential applications in mortality prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The damage assessment of numerous buildings after the earthquake is still a challenge by traditional methods as it requires a significant amount of time and resources for carrying out building-by-building seismic damage assessment. This study presents the machine learning (ML)-based damage assessment of buildings after an earthquake. The applicability of the machine learning model will be limited considering only structural properties or ground motion characteristics. Thus, in this study, the applicability of different machine learning techniques is explored using real-world earthquake damage datasets considering both the structural properties and ground motion characteristics. Initially, the entire dataset is used to train the ML models to classify the building's damage into five categories ranging from null to slight damage to collapse. Later, the dataset is divided into three traffic light damage tags: green, yellow, and red. The performance of the ML model to classify the building's damage into three damage tags is found better than that of classifying it into five damage categories. This research aims to be beneficial in planning and decision-making for emergency response and recovery following an earthquake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current measurement systems based on the IEEE-1159 standard have some limitations and robustness problems under noisy and fast-changing conditions. Besides, applying different methods for each Power Quality Disturbance (PQD) to every window is required but time-consuming and not feasible. Therefore, different kinds of two-stage methods, Detection and Classification (D&C), have been improved in many studies. Then, the required measurement can be performed to define disturbance. For this purpose, a new approach based on features of subcomponents with Machine Learning Algorithms (MLAs) to detect and classify PQDs is proposed. 21-class dataset including single and multiple PQDs under different noisy conditions was prepared randomly. Of this dataset, determined features were extracted and some of these were selected. Then, selected features were trained and tested with some MLAs in a workstation. Results obtained from comparative MLAs and the other classification methods show that the best MLA with related features is Random Forest with 96.97% while LightGBM, k-Nearest Neighbors, and XGBoost 96.85%, 96.73%, and 92.82% accuracy, respectively. Because the selected features, optimized parameters, and the related MLA were obtained by investigating for features provided from the PQDs in the whole parameter space, this approach brings the advantages of high accuracy, low D&C complexity, and computing load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study aims to develop and validate a prediction model in-hospital mortality in critically ill patients with sepsis-associated acute kidney injury (SA-AKI) based on machine learning algorithms. Methods: Patients who met the criteria for inclusion were identified in the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-IV (MIMIC-IV) database and divided according to the validation (n = 2440) and development (n = 9756, 80%) queues. Ensemble stepwise feature selection method was used to screen for effective features. The prediction models of short-term mortality were developed by seven machine learning algorithms. Ten-fold cross-validation was used to verify the performance of the algorithm in the development queue. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC-AUC) was used to evaluate the differentiation accuracy and performance of the prediction model in the validation queue. The best-performing model was interpreted by Shapley additive explanations (SHAP). Results: A total of 12,196 patients were enrolled in this study. Eleven variables were finally chosen to develop the prediction model. The AUC of the random forest (RF) model was the highest value both in the Ten-fold cross-validation and evaluation (AUC: 0.798, 95% CI: 0.774–0.821). According to the SHAP plots, old age, low Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score, high AKI stage, reduced urine output, high Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS II), high respiratory rate, low temperature, low absolute lymphocyte count, high creatinine level, dysnatremia, and low body mass index (BMI) increased the risk of poor prognosis. Conclusions: The RF model developed in this study is a good predictor of in-hospital mortality for patients with SA-AKI in the intensive care unit (ICU), which may have potential applications in mortality prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In rainfed and dryland agricultural areas with smallholder farms (less than 2 ha), crop diversity is high due to farmers' decisions and local climatic conditions, leading to a complex spatial--temporal distribution of crops. Monitoring and mapping crops is crucial for food security and implementing agricultural support programs. This study aims to map crop types across Senegal using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and the limited ground reference data available, which has been increasing recently. The study compares conventional supervised classification algorithms to unsupervised classification algorithms using highresolution satellite imagery. Crop type classification for 2020 in Senegal employed supervised machine learning algorithms, including Classification and Regression Trees (CART), Random Forest (RF), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud platform, and the unsupervised Iso-clustering classification algorithm with Spectral Matching Techniques (SMTs). Due to limited ground data, supervised classifiers achieved 45-55% accuracy, whereas the unsupervised semi-automatic approach achieved over 75% accuracy. The study indicates that supervised classifiers' performance depends on ground data quantity, while SMT shows good performance even with limited ground data. This SMT approach is valuable for classifying crop types in dryland areas with smallholder farms and diverse cropping patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the solitary reasons for mortality in the world are chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. These diseases should be diagnosed earlier; however, the technique is costly as well as it leads to many complications. Considering the complexity, datamining performs a major part in accurately classifying chronic disease. A new approach to classify chronic disease is by merging the multi-objective firefly optimisation algorithm (MOFFA) and random forest (RF). The main goal is generating an efficient and heterogeneous decision trees, while determining the optimum training sets to run at the same time. Rather utilising traditional approach like bootstrap, multi-objective firefly optimisation algorithm and random forest algorithm are proposed in this method. As a result, to train random forest, various training sets are generated with alternative instances and attributes. As a result, the performance of random forests can be improved and thus the prediction accuracy. The effectiveness of the proposed method is explored by juxtaposing the effectiveness of the proposed method with other classifiers for different datasets. The proposed work is tested on six UCI datasets. According to the findings, the proposed MOFFA-RF algorithm surpass other classifiers by the accuracy of 88% on CKD, 87% on CVD, 82% on diabetes, 88% on hepatitis, 88% on WBC, and 76% on ILPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on evaluating several machine learning algorithms for the condition assessment of utility timber poles. An efficient feature extraction technique combining Hilbert Huang transform (HHT) and wavelet packet transform (WPT) is adopted from the authors’ previous work and implemented to determine damage-sensitive features from vibration data related to five serviceable and eight unserviceable in-situ timber poles. Then, these features are pre-processed using correlation heat map analysis for feature selection. Principal component analysis (PCA) is adopted as the final step of pre-processing for reducing noise interference and enhancing classification accuracy. Afterwards, a feature matrix is formed, which is fed into the selected classifiers for pattern recognition. In addition, the information gain method is also implemented and compared against PCA to examine the effect of feature selection. Finally, selected classifiers are employed using those dominant features, and their performance is evaluated based on six parameters – accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, confusion matrix and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. It was found that choosing the best feature set related to the health state helps to improve the performance of the pattern recognition algorithms to a great extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water scarcity as well as social and economic damages caused by the increasing amounts of non-revenue water in the water distribution networks (WDNs) have been prompting innovative solutions. A great deal of potable water is wasted due to leakage in the WDNs all over the world. Hence, various leak detection approaches have been explored, including the promising application of acoustic devices. Exploiting the benefits of technological advances in acoustic devices, signal processing, and machine learning (ML), this study aimed to develop a sophisticated system for leak detection in WDNs. Different from laboratory-based studies, this study was conducted on real WDNs in Hong Kong and lasted for about two years. Utilizing acoustic emissions acquired using wireless noise loggers, various ML algorithms were explored to develop inspection models for in-service and buried WDNs. ML classification algorithms can identify patterns in the acquired signals for leak and no-leak statuses. Thus, a combination of features describing acoustic signals in time and frequency domains was utilized to facilitate the development of ML models. Separately for metal and non-metal WDNs, ten well-known ML algorithms were used to develop leak detection models. The validation results demonstrate the promising application of noise loggers and ML for leak detection in real WDNs. Support Vector Machine (SVM), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and Deep Learning (DL) leak detection models demonstrated a largely stable performance and a very good accuracy, particularly for new unlabelled cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, three new regression models are created for magnitude-type conversion with different machine learning algorithms (linear regression, regression trees, support vector machines, Gaussian process regression models, ensembles of trees) by using the earthquakes (M ≥ 4.0) that occurred in Turkey (1900–2020). Additionally, eight new equations are formed with linear and orthogonal regression methods. Developed equations and models are compared to equations selected from the literature by test data. As a result of the study, it is observed that machine learning algorithms create better models and provide results closer to the real values than created and selected equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the plethora of m-learning acceptance studies, few have tackled the importance of examining the actual use of m-learning systems from the lenses of social influence, expectation-confirmation, and satisfaction. Additionally, most of the prior technology adoption literature tends to use the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique in analyzing the structural models. To address these limitations, this study extends the technology acceptance model (TAM) with the expectation-confirmation model (ECM) and social influence to predict the actual use of m-learning systems. A comparative approach using the partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and machine learning algorithms was employed to test the proposed model with data collected from 448 students. The results revealed that both techniques have successfully provided support to all the hypothesized relationships of the research model. More interesting, the J48 classifier has performed better than the other classifiers in predicting the dependent variable in most cases. The employment of a comparative analytical approach is believed to add a significant contribution to the information systems (IS) literature in general, and the m-learning domain in specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer-aided diagnosis process in the field of health, especially cancer diagnosis, is of vital importance. Computer-aided diagnosis helps specialist physicians to make the most accurate diagnosis. According to research studies, it has been stated that the number of wrong or late diagnosis increases with each passing year and ultimately causes the death of people living in many parts of the world. For this reason, some calculations must be made to determine the most accurate one in the algorithm to be used to make the correct diagnosis. In this study, three different database Monk’ problems were used to determine the most accurate algorithm for medical diagnosis. Monk’ problems are used as one of the several classification problems used to create an important comparative study. Train and test operations were performed using five different Machine Learning Algorithms (MLAs) (k Nearest Neighbor (k-NN), Decision Tree Algorithm (DT), Random Forest Algorithm (RF), Naive Bayes algorithm (NB), Support Vector Cases (SVM)). These machine learning algorithms are compared statistically in terms of performance. Two different databases in the medical field were used to test the results (Breast Cancer Coimbra Data Set, Diabetic Retinopathy Debrecen Data Set). In the test processes in the experimental studies, the highest accuracy rate was obtained from the k-NN, DT, RF, NB, SVM algorithms, respectively; 0.9758, 1, 1, 0.9180, 0.9344. The best performance was obtained from RF MLA for 1. dataset, DT MLA for 2. dataset, highest accuracy rates from k-NN and RF MLAs in 3. dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proliferation of plastic-covered greenhouse (PCG) farming areas has been unparalleled in recent decades around the globe. Therefore, PCG's proper mapping and continuous monitoring are required to maintain protected farming sustainability and to reduce plastic pollution. Topography is one of the key factors affecting PCG mapping accuracy from satellite imagery. In this research, in order to understand the influence of elevation on PCG mapping accuracy in a Moroccan (with altitude below 200 m) and Vietnamese (an average altitude of 1,500 m) area, five supervised algorithms were applied to high-resolution PlanetScope and RapidEye imagery: maximum likelihood classification (MLC), k-nearest neighbours (k-NN), random forest (RF), support vector machine with linear kernel (SVML) and radial basis kernel (SVMRB). The findings indicated that k-NN (SVMRB) produced the greatest overall accuracy, followed by SVMRB (RF) for Dalat City (Loukkos). The present study also found that RapidEye outperforms PlanetScope in both areas and independently of the machine learning algorithm. Elevation data inclusion significantly improves (1.6% to 6.8%) various satellites' performance, particularly in Dalat City. Thus, this study demonstrated that topography has an impact on PCG mapping, especially in hilly areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and human activities have reduced the area and degraded the functions and services of wetlands in China. To protect and restore wetlands, it is urgent to predict the spatial distribution of potential wetlands. In this study, the distribution of potential wetlands in China was simulated by integrating the advantages of Google Earth Engine with geographic big data and machine learning algorithms. Based on a potential wetland database with 46,000 samples and an indicator system of 30 hydrologic, soil, vegetation, and topographic factors, a simulation model was constructed by machine learning algorithms. The accuracy of the random forest model for simulating the distribution of potential wetlands in China was good, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve value of 0.851. The area of potential wetlands was 332,702 km2, with 39.0% of potential wetlands in Northeast China. Geographic features were notable, and potential wetlands were mainly concentrated in areas with 400–600 mm precipitation, semi-hydric and hydric soils, meadow and marsh vegetation, altitude less than 700 m, and slope less than 3°. The results provide an important reference for wetland remote sensing mapping and a scientific basis for wetland management in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hyperspectral remote sensing technology has developed rapidly in recent years, providing a new scheme for intelligent monitoring of forest resources. This study aims to deeply mining the UAV hyperspectral information, and construct the best model for extracting Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens) forest information. Firstly, the spectral information features of Moso bamboo, broadleaf, bare area and shadow were obtained and their spectral anisotropies were analyzed. Secondly, multiple machine learning algorithms were combined with the recursive feature elimination (RFE) to obtain three sets of optimized feature subsets. Eventually, three sets of optimization features were substituted into multiple machine learning algorithms to build nine models of Moso bamboo information extraction, comparing their classification effects and generalization capabilities. The results showed that: (1) The subset of features optimized by different base classifiers in combination with RFE and the ranking results of optimized features' importance were different, but all the three sets of optimized feature subsets showed relatively obvious feature difference patterns; (2) The nine models based on SVM-RFE, RF-RFE and XGBoost-RFE were all capable of extracting Moso bamboo information, among which, the classification effect of the XGBoost-RFE-XGBoost model was the best and had significant advantages, with the overall classification accuracy OA, Kappa coefficient and R2 of 98.75%, 0.983 and 0.980, respectively, and the classification accuracy for Moso bamboo was 98.34%. Thus, XGBoost was the most applicable algorithm for feature optimization in combination with RFE, and the most effective algorithm with a better generalization ability for extracting Moso bamboo information from UAV hyperspectral images. This study is crucial for Moso bamboo's large area monitoring and fine identification, providing a technical reference for obtaining information about the spatial and temporal distribution of Moso bamboo resources timely and accurately, facilitating the monitoring and management of them, and giving full play to their ecological and economic benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study on pearl millet discrimination in mixed cropping environment was carried out as it forms the major coarse cereal crop in India. The study aims at determining the capabilities of Sentinel1A SAR data and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms for pearl millet discrimination. Six ML algorithms, that is, k-nearest neighbour (k-NN), Decision Tree (DT), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and Naïve Bayes (NB) were evaluated and compared. Meta-classifier using majority voting technique was proposed by ensembling classifiers (RF, SVM and NB) which were diverse and have comparable accuracies. The diversity assessment was conducted using Cochran Q statistics for ensembling purpose. RF classifier (83.76%) using VH polarization produced better result indicating importance of cross-polarization in crop classification. Further, meta-classifier proposed in the study improved the accuracy to 88.15% (approximately by 5%) and class accuracies of pearl millet resulting in improved discrimination of pearl millet in mixed cropping environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable management of groundwater resource is a most critical due to its over exploitation and ascending stress by industrial and socio-economic factors. It is utmost important to manage this precious resource by properly identifying the suitable Groundwater Potential Zones (GPZ). Therefore, the main aim of the present study is to delineate the GPZ in the upper Godavari sub-basin of India by employing different bi-variate, Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), ensembled, and Machine Learning (ML) models. These models include Weight of Evidence (WoE) (bi-variate), Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) (MCDM), Fuzzified Functional Ratio (F-FR) (bi-variate), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) (ML) and Extremely randomized Trees (ET) ML. The ensembled model featured different combination of WoE, TOPSIS and F-FR for mapping the enhanced accuracy in predicting the GPZ. A total of 15 groundwater factors were considered where 75% of the data were selected as training data and the rest 25% as validation data. These data were used to produce the ensembled ML models. The result of the model was plotted in terms of area under curve (AUC)-Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve and selected best model. The AUC-ROC result of the obtained model was found to be WoE oE models. The result of the model was plotted in termWoE_TOPSIS = 94%, WoE_F-FR = 93%, TOPSIS_F-FR = 94% and WoE_TOPSIS_F-FR = 95%. Results clearly indicate the improved accuracy of ensembled bi-variate and MCDM model over advanced ML model. The predicted statistical properties of the ensembled model also resembled ML models and a high correlation was observed. Thus, the ensembled model can be used over advanced ML models for delineating the GPZ mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study focuses on the preparation of landslide susceptibility maps in the Kali River valley, Kumaun Himalaya using three machine learning algorithms, namely K-nearest neighbour (KNN), random forest (RF) and extreme gradient boosting (XGB). Fifteen landslide conditioning factors (LCFs) were selected and an inventory of 368 landslides was used for the analysis. Multicollinearity analysis using the variation inflation factor, tolerance and Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) depicted less to no similarity between all factors. Evaluation of variable importance suggests LCFs such as slope, elevation and distance to thrust contributed significantly and consistently for all three models. Model accuracy was determined and compared using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and other statistical signifiers like accuracy, sensitivity, F-measure, accuracy, specificity and recall. The results show that the ensemble algorithms, XGB and RF, yield higher accuracy of approximately 85% compared to the KNN model with 81% accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban watershed of Guwahati is a highly flood-prone region and the fastest growing city situated on the bank of the Brahmaputra River. Therefore, this study aims to the urban flood susceptibility mapping of Guwahati city using metaheuristic optimization algorithms integrated with random forest (RF) machine learning algorithm. Further, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and multiple error measurements were applied to analyze the performances of the models used. The result showed that about one-third of the area of Guwahati city is under the high and very high flood risk while nearly 50% area comes under low and very low flood risk. The value of the area under curve (AUC) of ROC was above 0.80 for all the integrated models applied. However, the RF-bee colony (BCO) and the RF-based ant colony (ACO) are the two best flood susceptibility models that performed better in the analysis. The methodology adopted in the study is cost and time effective and can be used for the flood susceptibility modeling in other parts of the world. Further, the findings of this study can useful in the flood mitigation and planning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents two machine learning models, namely, the light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) and categorical boosting (CatBoost), for the first time for predicting flash flood susceptibility (FFS) in the Wadi System (Hurghada, Egypt). A flood inventory map with 445 flash flood sites was produced and randomly divided into two groups for training (70%) and testing (30%). Fourteen flood controlling factors were selected and evaluated for their relative importance in flood occurrence prediction. The performance of the two models was assessed using various indexes in comparison to the common random forest (RF) method. The results show areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROC) of above 97% for all models and that LightGBM outperforms other models in terms of classification metrics and processing time. The developed FFS maps demonstrate that highly populated areas are the most susceptible to flash floods. The present study proves that the employed algorithms (LightGBM and CatBoost) can be efficiently used for FFS mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feature complexity and heterogeneity of urban areas pose a challenge for tree species classification. This study examined the effectiveness of the integrated Worldview-2 (WV-2) bands, vegetation indices and normalized Digital Surface Model (nDSM) dataset in mapping common urban tree species and other land use and land cover (LULC) types using Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms. The study also ranked the importance of nDSM, WV-2 bands and vegetation indices. The results indicate that the integrated dataset was effective as shown by high classification accuracies of 97% for the RF and 94% for SVM classifiers. The nDSM was the top-ranked variable with high Mean Decrease in Accuracy (MDA) and Mean Decrease in Gini (MDG) scores of 0.98 and 0.61, respectively. This research provides information to municipalities on the methods and data that can be used for the sustainable management of urban tree species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four Accident Prediction Models have been defined for Italian two-lane rural, suburban, and urban roads by exploiting different Machine Learning Algorithms. Specifically, a Classification and Regression Tree, a Boosted Regression Tree, a Random Forest, and a Support Vector Machine have been implemented to predict the number of Fatal and Injury crashes on a 905-km network, which experienced 5,802 FI crashes in 2008-2016. The dataset incorporates geometrical, functional, and environmental information. Several performance metrics have been computed, such as Determination Coefficient, Mean Absolute Error, Root Mean Square Error, and scatterplots. Outcomes suggest that Support Vector Machine outperforms the other Machine Learning Algorithms for predicting Fatal and Injury crashes. In Addition, the computation of Predictor Importance shows that traffic flow, the density of intersections, driveway density, and type of area are the most impacting factors on crash likelihood. Road authorities may use these findings for conducting reliable safety analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The applications and advantages of the Internet for real-time information sharing can never be over-emphasized. These great benefits are too numerous to mention but they are being seriously hampered and made vulnerable due to phishing that is ravaging cyberspace. This development is, undoubtedly, frustrating the efforts of the Global Cyber Alliance – an agency with a singular purpose of reducing cyber risk. Consequently, various researchers have attempted to proffer solutions to phishing. These solutions are considered inefficient and unreliable as evident in the conflicting claims by the authors. Against this backdrop, this work has attempted to find the best approach to solving the challenge of identifying suspicious uniform resource locators (URLs) on Reddit social networks. In an effort to handle this challenge, attempts have been made to address two major problems. The first is how can the suspicious URLs be identified on Reddit social networks with machine learning techniques? And the second is how can internet users be safeguarded from unreliable and fake URLs on the Reddit social network? This work adopted six machine learning algorithms – AdaBoost, Gradient Boost, Random Forest, Linear SVM, Decision Tree, and Naïve Bayes Classifier – for training using features obtained from Reddit social network and for additional processing. A total sum of 532,403 posts were analyzed. At the end of the analysis, only 87,083 posts were considered suitable for training the models. After the experimentation, the best performing algorithm was AdaBoost with an accuracy level of 95.5% and a precision of 97.57%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil water content characteristics included field capacity (FC) and permanent wilting point (PWP) are key soil indicators to study permeability, soil water retention capacity, drainage, irrigation, plant water stress and solute movement. It is necessary to use an appropriate model for predicting these characteristics because of the hardness of their measurement. The present research shows a comparison of intelligent models included ANN, ANFIS, SVM and SVM optimised by firefly and particle swarm meta-heuristic algorithms (SVM-FFA and SVM-PSA) to predict soil water content at −33 and −1500 kPa matric potentials in agricultural soils. Results showed that the SVM-PSA and SVM-FFA hybrid models presented the best performance rather than the others, with predictor variables included geometric mean diameter (dg) of soil particles, bulk density, organic carbon, NDVI and NSMI and the values of R2 and NRMSE in validation dataset, 0.94, 0.081, 0.96 and 0.077 for FC and PWP in SVM-PSA, respectively, and 0.96, 0.079, 0.97 and 0.075 for FC and PWP in SVM-FFA model. Therefore, these intelligent machines are preferable for accurate prediction and could be used to predict soil water content of soils with different soil textures in other regions of Iran or even the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH) - type neural network algorithm is the heuristic self-organizing algorithm to model the sophisticated systems. In this study, we propose a new algorithm assembling different classifiers based on GMDH algorithm for binary classification. A Monte Carlo simulation study is conducted to compare diverse classifier ensemble based on GMDH (dce-GMDH) algorithm to the other well-known classifiers and to give recommendations for applied researchers on the selection of appropriate classifier under the different conditions. The simulation study illustrates the proposed approach is more successful than the other classifiers in classification in most scenarios generated under the different conditions. Our proposed method is compared to the other classifiers on Cleveland heart disease data. An implementation of the proposed approach is demonstrated on urine data. Moreover, the proposed algorithm is released under R package GMDH2 under the name of "dceGMDH" for implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data has been an alternative for monitoring ground targets, especially in areas with cloud cover. This study evaluates the potential of Sentinel-1A attributes for mapping land use and land cover (LULC) in a region of the Brazilian Amazon, using two different machine learning classifiers: Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Different scenarios were used that combined backscattering, polarimetry, and interferometry to the classification process, which was divided into two phases to improve the results. The RF shows superiority over the SVM for almost all scenarios for the two phases of the mapping. The scenario with all data, presented the best results with both classifiers. The final maps with RF and SVM, obtained a global accuracy of 82.7% and 74.5%, respectively. This study demonstrated the potential of Sentinel-1 to map LULC classes in the Amazon region using a classification in two phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the predictive performance of logistic and linear regression versus machine learning (ML) algorithms to identify patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treated with target immunomodulators (TIMs) using only pharmacy administrative claims. Methods: Adults aged 18-64 years with ≥1 TIM claim in the IBM MarketScan commercial database were included in this retrospective analysis. The predictive ability of logistic regression to identify RA patients was compared with supervised ML classification algorithms including random forest (RF), decision trees, linear support vector machines (SVMs), neural networks, naïve Bayes classifier, linear discriminant analysis (LDA), quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), and K-nearest neighbors (k-NN). Model performance was evaluated using F1 score, accuracy, precision, sensitivity, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), and Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC). Analyses were conducted in all-patient and etanercept-only samples. Results: In the all-patients sample, ML approaches did not outperform logistic regression. RF showed small improvements versus logistic regression that were not considered remarkable, respectively: F1 score (84.55% vs 83.96%), accuracy (84.05% vs 83.79%), sensitivity (84.53% vs 82.20%), AUROC (84.04% vs 83.85%), and MCC (68.07% vs 67.66%). Findings were similar in the etanercept samples. Conclusion: Logistic regression and ML approaches successfully identified patients with RA in a large pharmacy administrative claims database. The ML algorithms were no better than logistic regression at prediction. RF, SVMs, LDA, and ridge classifier showed comparable performance, while neural networks, decision trees, naïve Bayes classifier, and QDA underperformed compared with logistic regression in identifying patients with RA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an ensemble stacked generalization (ESG) approach for better prediction of electric vehicles (EVs) energy consumption. ESG is a weighted combination of multiple base regression models to one meta-regressor, which enhances the model prediction and decreases the model variance over a single regressor model. For the current study, we develop ESG by combining three individual base machine learning algorithms, i.e., Decision Tree (DT), Random Forest (RF), and K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), to predict the EVs' energy consumption. Tackling the challenge of predicting EVs' energy consumption, the data were collected from Aichi Prefecture, Japan, combining the digital elevation map with long-term GPS tracking data. EVs energy consumption in terms of energy efficiency (kWh/km) was estimated using several important variables such as average trip speed (km/h), trip distance, nighttime lighting, air conditioner (A/C), heater usage ratio, and road gradient. Several statistical evaluation metrics were used to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods. The prediction results show that ESG is more robust in predicting EVs' energy consumption and outperformed other models by yielding more acceptable values for proposed evaluation metrics. The results further demonstrate that the accuracy of predictive models for EVs energy consumption can be reasonably accomplished by adopting stacking techniques. The finding of this study could provide essential guidance to decision-makers and practitioners for planned development and optimal placing of EV charging infrastructures in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, analyzing the data gathered during production process of the energy has become an important issue in the wind energy sector in order to increase the efficiency of the produced energy. This study estimated the produced energy value by using machine learning algorithms depending on the temperature, wind speed and direction values gathered from the wind turbine in 2015. A mathematical equation which correctly estimates the energy production value by 90% has been obtained. A computer program was developed for other users to see the results of this mathematical equation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses three machine learning algorithms including, support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF) and gradient boosting machine (GBM) in the appraisal of property prices. It applies these methods to examine a data sample of about 40,000 housing transactions in a period of over 18 years in Hong Kong, and then compares the results of these algorithms. In terms of predictive power, RF and GBM have achieved better performance when compared to SVM. The three performance metrics including mean squared error (MSE), root mean squared error (RMSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) associated with these two algorithms also unambiguously outperform those of SVM. However, our study has found that SVM is still a useful algorithm in data fitting because it can produce reasonably accurate predictions within a tight time constraint. Our conclusion is that machine learning offers a promising, alternative technique in property valuation and appraisal research especially in relation to property price prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment of vegetation biochemical and biophysical variables is useful when developing indicators for biodiversity monitoring and climate change studies. Here, we compared a radiative transfer model (RTM) inversion by merit function and five machine learning algorithms trained on an RTM simulated dataset predicting the three plant traits leaf chlorophyll content (LCC), canopy chlorophyll content (CCC), and leaf area index (LAI), in a mixed temperate forest. The accuracy of the retrieval methods in predicting these three plant traits with spectral data from Sentinel-2 acquired on 13 July 2017 over Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany, was evaluated using in situ measurements collected contemporaneously. The RTM inversion using merit function resulted in estimations of LCC (R2 = 0.26, RMSE = 3.9 µg/cm2), CCC (R2 = 0.65, RMSE = 0.33 g/m2), and LAI (R2 = 0.47, RMSE = 0.73 m2/m2), comparable to the estimations based on the machine learning method Random forest regression of LCC (R2 = 0.34, RMSE = 4.06 µg/cm2), CCC (R2 = 0.65, RMSE = 0.34 g/m2), and LAI (R2 = 0.47, RMSE = 0.75 m2/m2). Several of the machine learning algorithms also yielded accuracies and robustness similar to the RTM inversion using merit function. The performance of regression methods trained on synthetic datasets showed promise for fast and accurate mapping of plant traits accross different plant functional types from remote sensing data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HTTP tunnels almost obscure the original contents and behaviors of network applications, which makes it challenging for the network management and cybersecurity equipment to identify the hidden network application behaviors. Many efficient detection schemes have been exploited for network application identification in prior works. However, the following "Last Mile" problem, the application behavior identification hidden in HTTP tunnels, remains a significant challenge. In this paper, the typical network application behaviors are firstly summarized and the discriminative spatial–temporal features are selected by information gain and information gain ratio analysis. The feature extraction is developed on flow fragments instead of a whole HTTP flow. Experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the selected features and compare the performance of three popular machine learning (ML) algorithms, namely Decision Tree, Random Forest, and Naïve Bayes. The implementation parameter suggestion for Decision Tree is also given according to a series of experiments on different algorithm parameters and flow fragmenting sizes with the compositive computation and accuracy considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To evaluate the predictive performance of logistic and linear regression versus machine learning (ML) algorithms to identify patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treated with target immunomodulators (TIMs) using only pharmacy administrative claims. Adults aged 18–64 years with ≥1 TIM claim in the IBM MarketScan commercial database were included in this retrospective analysis. The predictive ability of logistic regression to identify RA patients was compared with supervised ML classification algorithms including random forest (RF), decision trees, linear support vector machines (SVMs), neural networks, naïve Bayes classifier, linear discriminant analysis (LDA), quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), and K-nearest neighbors (k-NN). Model performance was evaluated using F1 score, accuracy, precision, sensitivity, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), and Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC). Analyses were conducted in all-patient and etanercept-only samples. In the all-patients sample, ML approaches did not outperform logistic regression. RF showed small improvements versus logistic regression that were not considered remarkable, respectively: F1 score (84.55% vs 83.96%), accuracy (84.05% vs 83.79%), sensitivity (84.53% vs 82.20%), AUROC (84.04% vs 83.85%), and MCC (68.07% vs 67.66%). Findings were similar in the etanercept samples. Logistic regression and ML approaches successfully identified patients with RA in a large pharmacy administrative claims database. The ML algorithms were no better than logistic regression at prediction. RF, SVMs, LDA, and ridge classifier showed comparable performance, while neural networks, decision trees, naïve Bayes classifier, and QDA underperformed compared with logistic regression in identifying patients with RA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically evaluates the several machine learning algorithms adaptable for lung cancer detection linked with IoT devices. In this work, a review of nearly 65 papers for predicting different diseases, using machine learning algorithms, has been done. The analysis mainly focuses on various machine learning algorithms used for detecting several diseases in order to search for a gap toward the future improvement for detecting lung cancer in medical IoT. Each technique was analyzed on each step, and the overall drawbacks are pointed out. In addition, it also analyzes the type of data used for predicting the concerned disease, whether it is the benchmark or manually collected data. Finally, research directions have been identified and depicted based on the various existing methodologies. This will be helpful for the upcoming researchers to detect the cancerous patients accurately in early stages without any flaws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precipitation prediction is central in hydrology and water resources planning and management. This paper introduces a semi-empirical predictive model to predict monthly precipitation and compares its predictive skill with those of machine learning (ML) methods. The stochastic method presented herein estimates monthly precipitation with one-step-ahead prediction properties. The ML predictive skill of the algorithms is evaluated by predicting monthly precipitation relying on the statistical association between precipitation and environmental and topographic factors. The semi-empirical predictive model features non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) for investigating the influence of multiple predictor variables on precipitation. The semi-empirical predictive model's parameters are optimized with the hybrid genetic algorithm (GA) and Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm (LM), or GALMA, yielding a validated model with high predictive skill. The methodologies are illustrated with data from Hubei Province, China, which comprise 27 meteorological station datasets from 1988–2017. The empirical results provide valuable insights for developing semi-empirical rainfall prediction models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manual visual inspection is customarily used to identify and evaluate service status of bridges. However, current procedures followed by human inspectors demand long inspection time to access bridges. Also, highly relying on subjective or empirical knowledge of inspectors may induce false evaluation. To overcome these challenges, a vision-based method is presented for bridge defects detection using transfer learning and convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which could automatically analyze and identify a large volume of collected images. Firstly, typical defect images are preprocessed by means of image processing techniques (IPTs). Secondly, the transfer learning model is trained on 1180 images with arbitrary sizes and pixel resolutions. Thirdly, the trained model is tested on 134 images taken from different bridges which are not used in training and validation sets, and finally recorded the accuracy of 97.8% for testing set. Comparative studies are conducted to examine the performance of the proposed approach using classical machine learning algorithms (MLAs) and features extracted with existing hand-craft methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach shows quite better performance in accuracy and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selection and use of technical parameters and performance indicators plays an essential role in the pavement management process. It is known that if more parameters are used, a more accurate evaluation of pavement condition is achieved, improving the choice of maintenance and rehabilitation interventions. However, one of the most expensive activities of the pavement management process is data collection. Accordingly, it is necessary to find a balance between the data collected and the real needs of the process. This paper presents a new approach for the development of pavement condition indicators using a machine learning algorithm named regularised regression with lasso. The present discussion is supported by a case study, which compares the proposed method with current practice for the description of the condition of a Portuguese motorway. The results suggest that the application of machine learning methods can improve the accuracy of pavement condition indicators when less data are available, contributing to achieve a balance between the needed data and information obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spam e-mail has become a very serious problem. Sending inappropriate messages to a large number of recipients indiscriminately has resulted in anger by users but large profits for spammers. This article looks at classifying spam e-mails from inboxes. Ten alternative classifiers are applied on one benchmark dataset to evaluate which classifier gives better result. A 10-fold cross validation is used to provide the accuracy. Results of the classification algorithms are compared with the spambase UCI dataset. The experimental results approve that the spam mails can be classified correctly, with accuracy reaching up to 95.45% for the Random Forest technique, compared to other classifiers used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mapping croplands, including fallow areas, are an important measure to determine the quantity of food that is produced, where they are produced, and when they are produced (e.g. seasonality). Furthermore, croplands are known as water guzzlers by consuming anywhere between 70% and 90% of all human water use globally. Given these facts and the increase in global population to nearly 10 billion by the year 2050, the need for routine, rapid, and automated cropland mapping year-after-year and/or season-after-season is of great importance. The overarching goal of this study was to generate standard and routine cropland products, year-after-year, over very large areas through the use of two novel methods: (a) quantitative spectral matching techniques (QSMTs) applied at continental level and (b) rulebased Automated Cropland Classification Algorithm (ACCA) with the ability to hind-cast, now-cast, and future-cast. Australia was chosen for the study given its extensive croplands, rich history of agriculture, and yet nonexistent routine yearly generated cropland products using multitemporal remote sensing. This research produced three distinct cropland products using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250-m normalized difference vegetation index 16-day composite time-series data for 16 years: 2000 through 2015. The products consisted of: (1) cropland extent/areas versus cropland fallow areas, (2) irrigated versus rainfed croplands, and (3) cropping intensities: single, double, and continuous cropping. An accurate reference cropland product (RCP) for the year 2014 (RCP2014) produced using QSMT was used as a knowledge base to train and develop the ACCA algorithm that was then applied to the MODIS time-series data for the years 2000-2015. A comparison between the ACCA-derived cropland products (ACPs) for the year 2014 (ACP2014) versus RCP2014 provided an overall agreement of 89.4% (kappa = 0.814) with six classes: (a) producer's accuracies varying between 72% and 90% and (b) user's accuracies varying between 79% and 90%. ACPs for the individual years 2000-2013 and 2015 (ACP2000-ACP2013, ACP2015) showed very strong similarities with several other studies. The extent and vigor of the Australian croplands versus cropland fallows were accurately captured by the ACCA algorithm for the years 2000-2015, thus highlighting the value of the study in food security analysis. The ACCA algorithm and the cropland products are released through http://croplands.org/app/map and http://geography.wr.usgs.gov/science/croplands/algorithms/australia_250m.html. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is devoted to the problem of estimating the number of people visible in a camera. It uses as features the ratio of foreground pixels in each cell of a rectangular grid. Using the above features and data mining techniques allowed reaching accuracy up to 85% for exact match and up to 95% for plus-minus one estimates for an indoor surveillance environment. Applying median filters to the sequence of estimation results increased the accuracy up to 91% for exact match. The architecture of a real-time people counting estimator is suggested. The results of analysis of experimental data are provided and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]