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Prediction of the groundwater nitrate concentration is of utmost importance for pollution control and water resource management. This research aims to model the spatial groundwater nitrate concentration in the Marvdasht watershed, Iran, based on several artificial intelligence methods of support vector machine (SVM), Cubist, random forest (RF), and Bayesian artificial neural network (Baysia-ANN) machine learning models. For this purpose, 11 independent variables affecting groundwater nitrate changes include elevation, slope, plan curvature, profile curvature, rainfall, piezometric depth, distance from the river, distance from residential, Sodium (Na), Potassium (K), and topographic wetness index (TWI) in the study area were prepared. Nitrate levels were also measured in 67 wells and used as a dependent variable for modeling. Data were divided into two categories of training (70%) and testing (30%) for modeling. The evaluation criteria coefficient of determination (R2), mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), and Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) were used to evaluate the performance of the models used. The results of modeling the susceptibility of groundwater nitrate concentration showed that the RF (R2 = 0.89, RMSE = 4.24, NSE = 0.87) model is better than the other Cubist (R2 = 0.87, RMSE = 5.18, NSE = 0.81), SVM (R2 = 0.74, RMSE = 6.07, NSE = 0.74), Bayesian-ANN (R2 = 0.79, RMSE = 5.91, NSE = 0.75) models. The results of groundwater nitrate concentration zoning in the study area showed that the northern parts of the case study have the highest amount of nitrate, which is higher in these agricultural areas than in other areas. The most important cause of nitrate pollution in these areas is agriculture activities and the use of groundwater to irrigate these crops and the wells close to agricultural areas, which has led to the indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers by irrigation or rainwater of these fertilizers is washed and penetrates groundwater and pollutes the aquifer.

Piping erosion is one form of water erosion that leads to significant changes in the landscape and environmental degradation. In the present study, we evaluated piping erosion modeling in the Zarandieh watershed of Markazi province in Iran based on random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), and Bayesian generalized linear models (Bayesian GLM) machine learning algorithms. For this goal, due to the importance of various geo-environmental and soil properties in the evolution and creation of piping erosion, 18 variables were considered for modeling the piping erosion susceptibility in the Zarandieh watershed. A total of 152 points of piping erosion were recognized in the study area that were divided into training (70%) and validation (30%) for modeling. The area under curve (AUC) was used to assess the effeciency of the RF, SVM, and Bayesian GLM. Piping erosion susceptibility results indicated that all three RF, SVM, and Bayesian GLM models had high efficiency in the testing step, such as the AUC shown with values of 0.9 for RF, 0.88 for SVM, and 0.87 for Bayesian GLM. Altitude, pH, and bulk density were the variables that had the greatest influence on the piping erosion susceptibility in the Zarandieh watershed. This result indicates that geo-environmental and soil chemical variables are accountable for the expansion of piping erosion in the Zarandieh watershed.

Tall buildings have become an integral part of cities despite all their pros and cons. Some current tall buildings have several problems because of their unsuitable location; the problems include increasing density, imposing traffic on urban thoroughfares, blocking view corridors, etc. Some of these buildings have destroyed desirable views of the city. In this research, different criteria have been chosen, such as environment, access, social-economic, land-use, and physical context. These criteria and sub-criteria are prioritized and weighted by the analytic network process (ANP) based on experts’ opinions, using Super Decisions V2.8 software. On the other hand, layers corresponding to sub-criteria were made in ArcGIS 10.3 simultaneously, then via a weighted overlay (map algebra), a locating plan was created. In the next step seven hypothetical tall buildings (20 stories), in the best part of the locating plan, were considered to evaluate how much of theses hypothetical buildings would be visible (fuzzy visibility) from the street and open spaces throughout the city. These processes have been modeled by MATLAB software, and the final fuzzy visibility plan was created by ArcGIS. Fuzzy visibility results can help city managers and planners to choose which location is suitable for a tall building and how much visibility may be appropriate. The proposed model can locate tall buildings based on technical and visual criteria in the future development of the city and it can be widely used in any city as long as the criteria and weights are localized.

This study aims to evaluate a new approach in modeling gully erosion susceptibility (GES) based on a deep learning neural network (DLNN) model and an ensemble particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm with DLNN (PSO-DLNN), comparing these approaches with common artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM) models in Shirahan watershed, Iran. For this purpose, 13 independent variables affecting GES in the study area, namely, altitude, slope, aspect, plan curvature, profile curvature, drainage density, distance from a river, land use, soil, lithology, rainfall, stream power index (SPI), and topographic wetness index (TWI), were prepared. A total of 132 gully erosion locations were identified during field visits. To implement the proposed model, the dataset was divided into the two categories of training (70%) and testing (30%). The results indicate that the area under the curve (AUC) value from receiver operating characteristic (ROC) considering the testing datasets of PSO-DLNN is 0.89, which indicates superb accuracy. The rest of the models are associated with optimal accuracy and have similar results to the PSO-DLNN model; the AUC values from ROC of DLNN, SVM, and ANN for the testing datasets are 0.87, 0.85, and 0.84, respectively. The efficiency of the proposed model in terms of prediction of GES was increased. Therefore, it can be concluded that the DLNN model and its ensemble with the PSO algorithm can be used as a novel and practical method to predict gully erosion susceptibility, which can help planners and managers to manage and reduce the risk of this phenomenon.

In this study, a new approach to basis of intelligent systems and machine learning algorithms is introduced for solving singular multi-pantograph differential equations (SMDEs). For the first time, a type-2 fuzzy logic based approach is formulated to find an approximated solution. The rules of the suggested type-2 fuzzy logic system (T2-FLS) are optimized by the square root cubature Kalman filter (SCKF) such that the proposed fineness function to be minimized. Furthermore, the stability and boundedness of the estimation error is proved by novel approach on basis of Lyapunov theorem. The accuracy and robustness of the suggested algorithm is verified by several statistical examinations. It is shown that the suggested method results in an accurate solution with rapid convergence and a lower computational cost.

Gestures are one of the basic modes of human communication and are usually used to represent different actions. Automatic recognition of these actions forms the basis for solving more complex problems like human behavior analysis, video surveillance, event detection, and sign language recognition, etc. Action recognition from images is a challenging task as the key information like temporal data, object trajectory, and optical flow are not available in still images. While measuring the size of different regions of the human body i.e., step size, arms span, length of the arm, forearm, and hand, etc., provides valuable clues for identification of the human actions. In this article, a framework for classification of the human actions is presented where humans are detected and localized through faster region-convolutional neural networks followed by morphological image processing techniques. Furthermore, geometric features from human blob are extracted and incorporated into the classification rules for the six human actions i.e., standing, walking, single-hand side wave, single-hand top wave, both hands side wave, and both hands top wave. The performance of the proposed technique has been evaluated using precision, recall, omission error, and commission error. The proposed technique has been comparatively analyzed in terms of overall accuracy with existing approaches showing that it performs well in contrast to its counterparts.

In this research, an attempt was made to reduce the dimension of wavelet-ANFIS/ANN (artificial neural network/adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system) models toward reliable forecasts as well as to decrease computational cost. In this regard, the principal component analysis was performed on the input time series decomposed by a discrete wavelet transform to feed the ANN/ANFIS models. The models were applied for dissolved oxygen (DO) forecasting in rivers which is an important variable affecting aquatic life and water quality. The current values of DO, water surface temperature, salinity, and turbidity have been considered as the input variable to forecast DO in a three-time step further. The results of the study revealed that PCA can be employed as a powerful tool for dimension reduction of input variables and also to detect inter-correlation of input variables. Results of the PCA-wavelet-ANN models are compared with those obtained from wavelet-ANN models while the earlier one has the advantage of less computational time than the later models. Dealing with ANFIS models, PCA is more beneficial to avoid wavelet-ANFIS models creating too many rules which deteriorate the efficiency of the ANFIS models. Moreover, manipulating the wavelet-ANFIS models utilizing PCA leads to a significant decreasing in computational time. Finally, it was found that the PCA-wavelet-ANN/ANFIS models can provide reliable forecasts of dissolved oxygen as an important water quality indicator in rivers.