Two deep learning approaches to forecasting disaggregated freight flows: convolutional and encoder–decoder recurrent

Time series forecasting of disaggregated freight flow is a key issue in decision-making by port authorities. For this purpose and to test new deep learning techniques we have selected seven time series of imported goods from Morocco to Spain through the port of Algeciras, and we have tested two forecasting deep neural networks models: dilated causal convolutional and encoder–decoder recurrent. We have experimented with four different granularities for each series: quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily. The results show that our neural network models can manage these raw series without first removing seasonality or trend. We also highlight the ability of neural models to work with a fixed input size of one year, being able to make good predictions using the same input size for all granularities. The two deep learning models have globally improved the benchmarks of the M4 Competition of forecasting. Each neural network model obtains its best results under different circumstances: the recurrent one with daily granularity and intermittent series, and the convolutional one with weekly and monthly granularities.