a b s t r a c tEnergy consumption is on the rise in developing economies. In order to improve present and future energy supplies, forecasting energy demands is essential. However, lack of accurate and comprehensive data set to predict the future demand is one of big problems in these countries. Therefore, using ensemble hybrid forecasting models that can deal with shortage of data set could be a suitable solution. In this paper, the annual energy consumption in Iran is forecasted using 3 patterns of ARIMA-ANFIS model. In the first pattern, ARIMA (Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average) model is implemented on 4 input features, where its nonlinear residuals are forecasted by 6 different ANFIS (Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System) structures including grid partitioning, sub clustering, and fuzzy c means clustering (each with 2 training algorithms). In the second pattern, the forecasting of ARIMA in addition to 4 input features is assumed as input variables for ANFIS prediction. Therefore, four mentioned inputs beside ARIMA's output are used in energy prediction with 6 different ANFIS structures. In the third pattern, due to dealing with data insufficiency, the second pattern is applied with AdaBoost (Adaptive Boosting) data diversification model and a novel ensemble methodology is presented.The results indicate that proposed hybrid patterns improve the accuracy of single ARIMA and ANFIS models in forecasting energy consumption, though third pattern, used diversification model, acts better than others and model's MSE criterion was decreased to 0.026% from 0.058% of second hybrid pattern. Finally, a comprehensive comparison between other hybrid prediction models is done. IntroductionEnergy is vital important for development of every country from the social, economic and environmental perspective. It has magnificent effect on industrial and agricultural products, health, sanitary, population, education and human life quality [1].As energy is a crucial input to industrial part of country, energy demand increases along the industrial function increase. Rapid changes in industry and economy strongly affect energy consumption. Therefore, energy consumption is an important economical index that represents economic development of a city or a country [2]. According to the international energy agent report, there should be many transformations in amount and type of future energy consumption (year 2030). As over the past decade global energy consumption has increased rapidly because of population and economic growth [3,4]. According to wide growth of energy consumption in the last decade, energy demand management is very important for achieving economic success, environment preservation and suitable planning for existing resources that result in self-sufficiency and economic development. Therefore, various techniques have been used for energy demand management to forecast future energy demands accurately [4]. However, energy forecasting is difficult, because it is affected by rapid development of economy, technology, gove...

Forecasting stock returns and their risk represents one of the most important concerns of market decision makers. Although many studies have examined single classifiers of stock returns and risk methods, fusion methods, which have only recently emerged, require further study in this area. The main aim of this paper is to propose a fusion model based on the use of multiple diverse base classifiers that operate on a common input and a Meta classifier that learns from base classifiers' outputs to obtain more precise stock return and risk predictions. A set of diversity methods, including Bagging, Boosting and AdaBoost, is applied to create diversity in classifier combinations. Moreover, the number and procedure for selecting base classifiers for fusion schemes is determined using a methodology based on dataset clustering and candidate classifiers' accuracy. The results demonstrate that Bagging exhibited superior performance within the fusion scheme and could achieve a maximum of 83.6% accuracy with Decision Tree, LAD Tree and Rep Tree for return prediction and 88.2% accuracy with BF Tree, DTNB and LAD Tree in risk prediction. For feature selection part, a wrapper-GA algorithm is developed and compared with the fusion model. This paper seeks to help researcher select the best individual classifiers and fuse the proper scheme in stock market prediction. To illustrate the approach, we apply it to Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) data for the period from 2002 to 2012.

In today’s competitive environment, holding companies are usually unable to successfully compete in production of goods and services due to technological sophistication. Therefore, for success of holding companies, selecting appropriate strategic alliance partner is a critical factor. Accordingly, the aim of the paper is to propose a systematic approach for an effective partner selection. Firstly, the underlying motivation and reasons for a strategic alliance building are presented using a SWOT analysis. Criteria of partners’ evaluation are attained on the basis of combining strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Due to uncertainty of criteria, they are weighted using fuzzy quantitative strategic planning matrix (FQSPM). Because of a large number of criteria obtained from the SWOT-FQSPM analysis, criteria are diminished based on their weights using the Gap analysis with fuzzy data ranking. In the next step, it is proposed to apply four ranking algorithms including the Fuzzy Additive Ratio Assessment (ARAS-F), the Fuzzy Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS-F), the Fuzzy Multi-Objective Optimization by Ratio Analysis (Fuzzy MOORA), and the Fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal solution (Fuzzy TOPSIS) to evaluate strategic partners. Finally, the results are combined with the help of the Borda method to choose the best alternative. To illustrate the efficiency of the proposed approach, a real partner selection problem at a holding industries factory in Iran is presented.

No abstract

Please cite this article as: Sasan Barak , Tomáš Tichý , Wrapper ANFIS-ICA method to do stock market timing and feature selection on the basis of Japanese Candlestick, Expert Systems With Applications (2015), AbstractPredicting stock prices is an important objective in the financial world. This paper presents a novel forecasting model for stock markets on the basis of the wrapper ANFIS (Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Inference System) -ICA (Imperialist Competitive Algorithm) and technical analysis of Japanese Candlestick. Two approaches of Raw-based and Signal-based are devised to extract the model's input variables with 15 and 24 features, respectively. The correct predictions percentages for periods of 1-6 days with the total number of buy and sell signals are considered as output variables. . In proposed model, the ANFIS prediction results are used as a cost function of wrapper model and ICA is used to select the most appropriate features. This novel combination of feature selection not only takes advantage of ICA optimization swiftness, but also the ANFIS prediction accuracy. The emitted buy and sell signals of the model revealed that Signal databases approach gets better results with %87 prediction accuracy and the wrapper features selection obtains 12 % improvement in predictive performance regarding to the base study. Additionally, since the wrapper-based feature selection models are considerably more time-consuming, our presented wrapper ANFIS-ICA algorithm's results have superiority in time decreasing as well as prediction accuracy increasing regarding to other algorithms such as wrapper Genetic algorithm (GA).

No abstract

Due to the lack of objective measures, the evaluation and prioritization of clustering methods is inherently challenging. Since their evaluation generally involves numerous criteria, it can be designed as a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem and using multiple data sets, the problem can be formulated as a group MCDM modeling. In this paper, a MCDM-based framework is proposed to evaluate and rank a number of clustering methods. The proposed approach employs three group MCDM algorithms and a Borda count method which leads to a comprehensive, robust framework capable of evaluating and ranking multiple clustering models on manifold data sets (cases). Moreover, we introduce a hybrid data clustering algorithm which combines a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm with a Kmeans clustering algorithm. Finally, a clustering comparison with regard to both external and internal evaluation indicators is another contribution of this paper. Six clustering methods are compared based on five evaluation measures. The results of comparative experiments on ten data sets indicate the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid clustering method. More importantly, the experimental results vividly demonstrate the effectiveness of the group MCDM-based evaluation on clustering model selection.

Safety is a critical element in the air transport industry. Although fatal air accidents are rare compared to other transport industries, the rapid growth in air travel demands has resulted in a growing aviation risk exposure and new challenges in the aviation sector. Although the issue of airline safety is of serious public concern, notably few studies have investigated the safety efficiency of airlines. This paper aims to propose a novel hybrid method using fuzzy data envelopment analysis (DEA) and fuzzy multi-attribute decision making (F-MADM) for ranking the airlines' safety. In this study, fuzzy DEA is utilised to calculate criteria weights, in contrast to the conventional approach of using DEA for measuring the efficiency of alternatives. A ranking of each airline (DMU) on the basis of obtained weights is then assessed using MADM methods. Six MADM methods including Fuzzy SAW, Fuzzy TOPSIS, Fuzzy VIKOR, ARAS-F, COPRAS-F and Fuzzy MULTIMOORA are implemented to rank the alternatives, and finally, the results are compounded with the utility interval technique. This new hybrid method can efficiently overcome the pitfalls of traditional hybrid DEA-MADM models. The method proposed in this study is used to evaluate the safety levels of seven Iranian airlines and to select the safest one.