Search

In the present study, three different artificial intelligence based non-linear models, i.e. feed forward neural network (FFNN), adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), support vector machine (SVM) approaches and a classical multi-linear regression (MLR) method were applied for predicting the performance of Nicosia wastewater treatment plant (NWWTP), in terms of effluent biological oxygen demand (BOD eff ), chemical oxygen demand (COD eff ) and total nitrogen (TN eff ). The daily data were used to develop single and ensemble models to improve the prediction ability of the methods. The obtained results of single models proved that, ANFIS model provides effective outcomes in comparison with single models. In the ensemble modeling, simple averaging ensemble, weighted averaging ensemble and neural network ensemble techniques were proposed subsequently to improve the performance of the single models. The results showed that in prediction of BOD eff , the ensemble models of simple averaging ensemble (SAE), weighted averaging ensemble (WAE) and neural network ensemble (NNE), increased the performance efficiency of artificial intelligence (AI) modeling up to 14%, 20% and 24% at verification phase, respectively, and less than or equal to 5% for both COD eff and TN eff in calibration phase. This shows that NNE model is more robust and reliable ensemble method for predicting the NWWTP performance due to its non-linear averaging kernel.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) is the common hope for HIV/AIDS-treated patients. Total commitments from individuals and the entire community are the major challenges faced during treatment. This study investigated the progress of ART in the Federal Teaching Hospital in Gombe state, Nigeria by using various records of patients receiving treatment in the ART hospital unit. We combined artificial intelligence (AI)-based models and correspondence analysis (CA) techniques to predict and visualize the progress of ART from the beginning to the end. The AI models employed are artificial neural networks (ANNs), adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems (ANFISs) and support-vector machines (SVMs) and a classical linear regression model of multiple linear regression (MLR). According to the outcome of this study, ANFIS in both training and testing outperformed the remaining models given the R2 (0.903 and 0.904) and MSE (7.961 and 3.751) values, revealing that any increase in the number of years of taking ART medication will provide HIV/AIDS-treated patients with safer and elongated lives. The contingency results for the CA and the chi-square test did an excellent job of capturing and visualizing the patients on medication, which gave similar results in return, revealing there is a significant association between ART drugs and the age group, while the association between ART drugs and marital status (93.7%) explained a higher percentage of variation compared with the remaining variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wastewater treatment and reuse are being regarded as the most effective strategy for combating water scarcity threats. This study examined and reported the applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence in the phytoremediation of wastewater using Salvinia molesta plants. Water quality (WQ) indicators (total dissolved solids (TDS), temperature, oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), and turbidity) of the S. molesta treatment system at a retention time of 24 h were measured using an Arduino IoT device. Finally, four machine learning tools (ML) were employed in modeling and evaluating the predicted concentration of the total dissolved solids after treatment (TDSt) of the water samples. Additionally, three nonlinear error ensemble methods were used to enhance the prediction accuracy of the TDSt models. The outcome obtained from the modeling and prediction of the TDSt depicted that the best results were observed at SVM-M1 with 0.9999, 0.0139, 1.0000, and 0.1177 for R2, MSE, R, and RMSE, respectively, at the training stage. While at the validation stage, the R2, MSE, R, and RMSE were recorded as 0.9986, 0.0356, 0.993, and 0.1887, respectively. Furthermore, the error ensemble techniques employed significantly outperformed the single models in terms of mean square error (MSE) and root mean square error (RMSE) for both training and validation, with 0.0014 and 0.0379, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of health informatics opens new opportunities and doors for different disease diagnoses. The current work proposed the implementation of five different stand-alone techniques coupled with four different novel hybridized paradigms for the clinical prediction of hepatitis C status among patients, using both sociodemographic and clinical input variables. Both the visualized and quantitative performances of the stand-alone algorithms present the capability of the Gaussian process regression (GPR), Generalized neural network (GRNN), and Interactive linear regression (ILR) over the Support Vector Regression (SVR) and Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) models. Hence, due to the lower performance of the stand-alone algorithms at a certain point, four different novel hybrid data intelligent algorithms were proposed, including: interactive linear regression-Gaussian process regression (ILR-GPR), interactive linear regression-generalized neural network (ILR-GRNN), interactive linear regression-Support Vector Regression (ILR-SVR), and interactive linear regression-adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ILR-ANFIS), to boost the prediction accuracy of the stand-alone techniques in the clinical prediction of hepatitis C among patients. Based on the quantitative prediction skills presented by the novel hybridized paradigms, the proposed techniques were able to enhance the performance efficiency of the single paradigms up to 44% and 45% in the calibration and validation phases, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Floods, one of the most common natural hazards globally, are challenging to anticipate and estimate accurately. This study aims to demonstrate the predictive ability of four ensemble algorithms for assessing flood risk. Bagging ensemble (BE), logistic model tree (LT), kernel support vector machine (k-SVM), and k-nearest neighbour (KNN) are the four algorithms used in this study for flood zoning in Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia. The 141 flood locations have been identified in the research area based on the interpretation of aerial photos, historical data, Google Earth, and field surveys. For this purpose, 14 continuous factors and different categorical are identified to examine their effect on flooding in the study area. The dependency analysis (DA) was used to analyse the strength of the predictors. The study comprises two different input variables combination (C1 and C2) based on the features sensitivity selection. The under-the-receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and root mean square error (RMSE) were utilised to determine the accuracy of a good forecast. The validation findings showed that BE-C1 performed best in terms of precision, accuracy, AUC, and specificity, as well as the lowest error (RMSE). The performance skills of the overall models proved reliable with a range of AUC (89–97%). The study can also be beneficial in flash flood forecasts and warning activity developed by the Jeddah flood disaster in Saudi Arabia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unconsolidated earthen surface materials can retain heavy metals originating from different sources. These metals are dangerous to humans as well as the immediate environment. This danger leads to the need to assess various geochemical conditions of the materials. In this study, the assessment of topsoil materials' contamination with heavy metals (HMs) was conducted. The material's representative spatial samples were taken from various sources: agricultural, industrial, and residential areas. The materials include topsoil, eolian deposits, and other unconsolidated earthen materials. The samples were analyzed using the ICP-OES. The obtained results based on the experimental procedure indicated that the average levels of the heavy metals were: As (1.21 ± 0.69 mg/kg), Ba (110.62 ± 262 mg/kg), Hg (0.08 ± 0.18 mg/kg), Pb (6.34 ± 14.55 mg/kg), Ni (8.95 ± 5.66 mg/kg), V (9.98 ± 6.08 mg/kg), Cd (1.18 ± 4.33 mg/kg), Cr (31.79 ± 37.9 mg/kg), Cu (6.76 ± 12.54 mg/kg), and Zn (23.44 ± 84.43 mg/kg). Subsequently, chemometrics modeling and a prediction of Cr concentration (mg/kg) were performed using three different modeling techniques, including two artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, namely, generalized neural network (GRNN) and Elman neural network (Elm NN) models, as well as a classical multivariate statistical technique (MST). The results indicated that the AI-based models have a superior ability in estimating the Cr concentration (mg/kg) than MST, whereby GRNN can enhance the performance of MST up to 94.6% in the validation step. The concentration levels of most metals were found to be within the acceptable range. The findings indicate that AI-based models are cost-effective and efficient tools for trace metal estimations from soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hormone production by the thyroid gland is a prime aspect of maintaining body homeostasis. In this study, the ability of single artificial intelligence (AI)-based models, namely multi-layer perceptron (MLP), support vector machine (SVM), and Hammerstein–Weiner (HW) models, were used in the simulation of thyroidism status. The study's primary aim is to unveil the best performing model for the simulation of thyroidism status using hepatic enzymes and hormones as the independent variables. Three statistical metrics were used in evaluating the performance of the models, namely determination coefficient (R2), correlation coefficient (R), and mean squared error (MSE). Results: Considering the quantitative and visual presentation of the results obtained, it has been observed that the MLP model showed higher performance skills than SVM and HW, which improved their performances up to 3.77% and 12.54%, respectively, in the testing stages. Furthermore, to boost the performance of the single AI-based models, three different ensemble approaches were employed, including neural network ensemble (NNE), weighted average ensemble (WAE), and simple average ensemble (SAE). The quantitative predictive performance of the NNE technique boosts the performance of SAE and WAE approaches up to 2.85% and 1.22%, respectively, in the testing stage. Conclusions: Comparative performance of the ensemble techniques over the single models showed that NNE outperformed all the three AI-based models (MLP, SVM, and HW) and boosted their performance accuracy up to 7.44%, 11.212%, and 19.98%, respectively, in the testing stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed at employing three data-driven models, namely the Hammerstein-Weiner (HW) model, support vector machine (SVM), and feedforward back propagation neural network (FFBPNN) and traditional multi-linear regression, as well as two non-linear ensemble techniques viz: HW-ensemble and FFBPNN-ensemble, were employed to predict chemical oxygen demand (CODeff). For the prediction of the CODeff, two types of data were used, the first one being environmental data from the new Nicosia waste water treatment plant conductivity (Condinf), including total nitrogen (TNinf), total phosphorus (TPinf) and one-effluent parameter CODeff as M1, where the second was meteorology data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (at 2 m above the Earth's surface), such as relative humidity (R2H), maximum temperature (T2M_M) and mean temperature (T2M) as M2, in a hybrid model M3, which was a combination of both the meteorology and environmental data M1 and M2. According to the performance criteria RMSE and DC of the single models, values of HW-M1 (0.0308 and 0.9686), HW-M2 (0.0322 and 0.9093) and SVM-M3 (0.025 and 0.9486) were recorded. The ensemble technique improved the performance of the single models in the verification phase by 12% and 19% for HW-E and FFBPNN-E, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, and feed forward neural network as two artificial intelligence-based models along with conventional multiple linear regression model were used to predict the multi-station modelling of dissolve oxygen concentration at the downstream of Mathura City in India. The data used are dissolved oxygen, pH, biological oxygen demand and water temperature at upper, middle and downstream of the river. To predict outlet of dissolved oxygen of the river in each station, considering different input combinations as i) 11 inputs parameters for all three locations except, dissolved oxygenat the downstream ii) 7 inputs for middle and downstream except dissolved oxygen, at the target location and lastly iii) 3 inputs for downstream location. To determine the accuracy of the model, root mean square error and determination coefficient were employed. The simulated results of dissolved oxygen at three stations indicated that, multi-linear regression is found not to be efficient for predicting dissolved oxygen. In addition, both artificial intelligence models were found to be more capable and satisfactory for the prediction. Adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system model demonstrated high prediction ability as compared to feed forward neural network model. The results indicated that adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system model has a slight increment in performance than feed forward neural network model in validation step. Adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system proved high improvement in efficiency performance over multilinear regression modeling up to 18% in calibration phase and 27% in validation phase for the best models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater (GW) is a critical freshwater resource for billions of individuals worldwide. Rapid anthropogenic exploitation has increasingly deteriorated GW quality and quantity. Reliable estimation of complex hydrochemical properties of GW is crucial for sustainable development. Real field and experimental studies in an agricultural area from the significant sandstone aquifers (Wajid Aquifer) were conducted. For the modelling purpose, three types of computational models, including the emerging Hammerstein–Wiener (HW), back propagation neural network (BPNN), and statistical multi-variate regression (MVR), were developed for the multi-station estimation of total dissolved solids (TDS) (mg/L) and total hardness (TH) (mg/L). A geographic information system (GIS) was used for the spatial variability assessment of 32 hydrochemical and physical properties of the GW aquifer. A comprehensive visualized literature review spanning several decades was conducted in order to gain an understanding of the existing research and debates relevant to a particular GW and artificial intelligence (AI) study. The experimental data, pre-processing, and feature selection were conducted to determine the most dominant variables for AI-based modelling. The estimation results were evaluated using determination coefficient (DC), mean bias error (MBE), mean square error (MSE), and root mean square error (RMSE). The outcomes proved that TDS (mg/L) and TH (mg/L) correlated more than 90% and 70–85% with Ca2+, Cl−, Br−, NO3−, and Fe, and Na+, SO42−, Mg2+, and F− combinations, respectively. HW-M1 justified promising among all the models with MBE = 1.41 × 10−11, 1.14 × 10−14, and MSE = 7.52 × 10−2, 3.88 × 10−11 for TDS (mg/L), TH (mg/L), respectively. The accuracy proved merit for the overall development of and practical estimation of hydrochemical variables (TDS, TH) (mg/L) and decision-making benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing anthropogenic emissions due to rapid industrialization have triggered environmental pollution and pose a threat to the well-being of the ecosystem. In this study, the first scenario involved the spatio-temporal assessment of topsoil contamination with trace metals in the Dammam region, and samples were taken from 2 zones: the industrial (ID), and the agricultural (AG) area. For this purpose, more than 130 spatially distributed samples of topsoil were collected from residential, industrial, and agricultural areas. Inductively coupled plasma—optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES)—was used to analyze the samples for various trace metals. The second scenario involved the creation of different artificial intelligence (AI) models, namely an artificial neural network (ANN) and a support vector regression (SVR), for the estimation of zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), and lead (Pb) using feature-based input selection. The experimental outcomes depicted that the average concentration levels of HMs were as follows: Chromium (Cr) (31.79 ± 37.9 mg/kg), Copper (Cu) (6.76 ± 12.54 mg/kg), Lead (Pb) (6.34 ± 14.55 mg/kg), and Zinc (Zn) (23.44 ± 84.43 mg/kg). The modelling accuracy, based on different evaluation criteria, showed that agricultural and industrial stations showed performance merit with goodness-of-fit ranges of 51–91% and 80–99%, respectively. This study concludes that AI models could be successfully applied for the rapid estimation of soil trace metals and related decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]