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This paper precisely estimates the looming demand for hydrogen within the transportation sector, spanning 14 pivotal G20 nations from 2022 to 2050, anchored in the global vehicle hydrogen market penetration rate. Employing a robust techno-economic modeling methodology and leveraging Geographic Information System (GIS) for enriched visualization, it unveils distinct environmental dividends across three thoughtfully devised scenarios: Business- as -Usual, Moderate, and Aggressive. Findings herald India and China as pinnacles of hydrogen demand, with South Korea and Japan tailing closely. The study forecasts the energy consumption for solar hydrogen production in G20 countries to oscillate between 3.02 and 2.89 million GWh in 2022, while production costs are anticipated to range from $8.47/kg to $10.01/kg. In an assertive scenario, the paper illuminates a pathway towards achieving a significant CO 2 reduction, unmasking environmental savings of up to a staggering 48%, equivalent to 1.5 million mtCO 2 , by 2050. [Display omitted] • Hydrogen demand of G20 countries is analyzed using GIS and techno-economic models. • The projected adoption rates of hydrogen vary among the G20 countries. • Solar energy is crucial in determining each region's annual energy demand. • China, US, and India have the highest solar potential throughout the year. • The environmental analysis shows 850–1.5 million mtCO2 total emissions by 2050. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of deaths due to road accident is increasing day by day and has become an alarming global problem over the decades. India, with her rising motorization is no stranger to this global catastrophe. In this paper two relatively simple yet powerful and versatile techniques for forecasting time series data, autoregressive integrated moving average method (ARIMA) and exponential smoothing method are used to forecast the number of deaths due to road accidents in India from the year 2022-- 2031. The results based on the two methods are compared and it is found that they are in sync with each other and pre-existing literature. Furthermore, this is a unique attempt to use two time series analysis techniques on the same data and carry out a comparative analysis. The data was collected from the annual report of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, India (2020) and Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India (ADSI) Report of National Crime Record Bureau (2021). After examining all the probable models, it is observed that ARIMA (2, 2, 2) model and exponential smoothing (M, A, N) model are suitable for the given data. Amongst the two, ARIMA (2, 2, 2) model has a lower AIC and BIC value. Thus, this comes out to be the best model as per our model selection criterion. Further, the study also reveals an upward trend of number of road accidental deaths for the upcoming 10 years in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep learning models in recent times have shown promising results for solar energy forecasting. Solar energy depends heavily on local weather conditions, and as a result, typically hundreds of models are built, which need site and season-specific training. The model maintenance and management also become a tedious job with such a large number of models. Here, we are motivated to use transfer learning to accommodate local variations in the solar pattern over the available global pattern. It may also be noted that apparently transfer learning has been rarely/never used for solar forecasting. In this paper, we have proposed a bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BGRU) based model, which employs transfer learning for short-term solar energy forecasting. The said model yields better forecasting accuracy compared to site-specific models with a lower variance. It also takes 39.6% less parameters and 76.1% reduced time for training. The current literature suggests that selection of base scenario for transfer learning is an open problem and in this paper, we have also proposed an intuitive strategy for the same. The effectiveness of the same is established through empirical study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is currently facing a pandemic called COVID-19 which has drastically changed our human lifestyle, affecting it badly. The lifestyle and the thought processes of every individual have changed with the current situation. This situation was unpredictable, and it contains a lot of uncertainties. In this paper, the authors have attempted to predict and analyze the disease along with its related issues to determine the maximum number of infected people, the speed of spread, and most importantly, its evaluation using a model-based parameter estimation method. In this research the Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered model with different conditions has been used for the analysis of COVID-19. The effects of lockdown, the light switch method, and parameter variations like contact ratio and reproduction number are also analyzed. The authors have attempted to study and predict the lockdown effect, particularly in India in terms of infected and recovered numbers, which show substantial improvement. A disease-free endemic stability analysis using Lyapunov and LaSalle's method is presented, and novel methods such as the convalescent plasma method and the Who Acquires Infection From Whom method are also discussed, as they are considered to be useful in flattening the curve of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a comparison of various time series forecasting models to forecast annual data on sugarcane production over 63 years from 1960 to 2022. In this research, the Mean Forecast Model, the Naive Model, the Simple Exponential Smoothing Model, Holt's model, and the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average time series models have all been used to make effective and accurate predictions for sugarcane. Different scale‐dependent error forecasting techniques and residual analysis have been used to examine the forecasting accuracy of these time series models. SE of Residuals, Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) are used to analyse the forecast's accuracy. The best model has been selected based on the predictions with the lowest value, according to the three‐performance metrics of RMSE, MAE, and AIC. The estimated sugarcane production shows an increasing trend for the next 10 years and is projected to be 37,763.38 million tonnes in the year 2032. Further, empirical results support the plan and execution of viable strategies to advance sugarcane production in India to fulfil the utilisation need of the increasing population and further improve food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the latest technologies gives rise to the usage of noninvasive techniques for assisting health-care systems. Amongst the four major cardiovascular diseases, stroke is one of the most dangerous and life-threatening disease, but the life of a patient can be saved if the stroke is detected during early stage. The literature reveals that the patients always experience ministrokes which are also known as transient ischemic attacks (TIA) before experiencing the actual attack of the stroke. Most of the literature work is based on the MRI and CT scan images for classifying the cardiovascular diseases including a stroke which is an expensive approach for diagnosis of early strokes. In India where cases of strokes are rising, there is a need to explore noninvasive cheap methods for the diagnosis of early strokes. Hence, this problem has motivated us to conduct the study presented in this paper. A noninvasive approach for the early diagnosis of the strokes is proposed. The cascaded prediction algorithms are time-consuming in producing the results and cannot work on the raw data and without making use of the properties of EEG. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to devise mechanisms to forecast strokes on the basis of processed EEG data. This paper is proposing time series-based approaches such as LSTM, biLSTM, GRU, and FFNN that can handle time series-based predictions to make useful decisions. The experimental research outcome reveals that all the algorithms taken up for the research study perform well on the prediction problem of early stroke detection, but GRU performs the best with 95.6% accuracy, whereas biLSTM gives 91% accuracy and LSTM gives 87% accuracy and FFNN gives 83% accuracy. The experimental outcome is able to measure the brain waves to predict the signs of strokes. The findings can certainly assist the physicians to detect the stroke at early stages to save the lives of the patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a continuing extensive incident globally affecting several million people's health and sometimes leading to death. The outbreak prediction and making cautious steps is the only way to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This paper presents an Adaptive Neuro-fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS)-based machine learning technique to predict the possible outbreak in India. The proposed ANFIS-based prediction system tracks the growth of epidemic based on the previous data sets fetched from cloud computing. The proposed ANFIS technique predicts the epidemic peak and COVID-19 infected cases through the cloud data sets. The ANFIS is chosen for this study as it has both numerical and linguistic knowledge, and also has ability to classify data and identify patterns. The proposed technique not only predicts the outbreak but also tracks the disease and suggests a measurable policy to manage the COVID-19 epidemic. The obtained prediction shows that the proposed technique very effectively tracks the growth of the COVID-19 epidemic. The result shows the growth of infection rate decreases at end of 2020 and also has delay epidemic peak by 40–60 days. The prediction result using the proposed ANFIS technique shows a low Mean Square Error (MSE) of 1.184 × 10–3 with an accuracy of 86%. The study provides important information for public health providers and the government to control the COVID-19 epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Air Quality Index (AQI) dataset contains information on measurements of pollutants and ambient air quality conditions at certain location that can be used to predict air quality. Unfortunately, this dataset often has many missing observations and imbalanced classes. Both of these problems can affect the performance of the prediction model. In particular, predictions for the minority class are very important because inaccurate predictions can be fatal or cause big losses. Moreover, the missing data may lead to biased results. This paper proposes the single imputation of the median and the multiple imputations of the k -Nearest Neighbor (KNN) regressor to handle missing values of less than or equal to 10% and more than 10%, respectively. At the same time, the SMOTE-Tomek Links address the imbalanced class. These proposed approaches to handle both issues are then used to assess the air quality prediction of the India AQI dataset using Naive Bayes (NB), KNN, and C4.5. The five treatments show that the proposed method of the Median-KNN regressor-SMOTE-Tomek Links is able to improve the performance of the India air quality prediction model. In other words, the proposed method succeeds in overcoming the problems of missing values and class imbalance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought Prediction is to be focused of great importance for India. Drought can be Predicted using the amount of rainfall data. Two types of predictions can be done, they are – Long term Predictions: Predict rainfall over few weeks/months in advance. Short term Predictions: Predict rainfall a few days in advance in specific locations. Indian meteorological department provides forecasting data required for the project. In this Paper we are planning to work on long term predictions of rainfall. The main motive of the paper is to predict the amount of rainfall in Particular division and state whether the drought will occur or not in advance. We predict the amount of rainfall using Multiple Linear Regression(MLR) which is a branch of AI by using the past dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar photovoltaic (PV) power is emerging as one of the most viable renewable energy sources. The recent enhancements in the integration of renewable energy sources into the power grid create a dire need for reliable solar power forecasting techniques. In this paper, a new long‐term solar PV power forecasting approach using long short‐term memory (LSTM) model with Nadam optimizer is presented. The LSTM model performs better with the time‐series data as it persists information of more time steps. The experimental models are realized on a 250.25 kW installed capacity solar PV power system located at MANIT Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. The proposed model is compared with two time‐series models and eight neural network models using LSTM with different optimizers. The obtained results using LSTM with Nadam optimizer present a significant improvement in the forecasting accuracy of 30.56% over autoregressive integrated moving average, 47.48% over seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average, and 1.35%, 1.43%, 3.51%, 4.88%, 11.84%, 50.69%, and 58.29% over models using RMSprop, Adam, Adamax, SGD, Adagrad, Adadelta, and Ftrl optimizer, respectively. The experimental results prove that the proposed methodology is more conclusive for solar PV power forecasting and can be employed for enhanced system planning and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air is one of the most fundamental constituents for the sustenance of life on earth. The meteorological, traffic factors, consumption of nonrenewable energy sources, and industrial parameters are steadily increasing air pollution. These factors affect the welfare and prosperity of life on earth; therefore, the nature of air quality in our environment needs to be monitored continuously. The Air Quality Index (AQI), which indicates air quality, is influenced by several individual factors such as the accumulation of NO2, CO, O3, PM2.5, SO2, and PM10. This research paper aims to predict and forecast the AQI with Machine Learning (ML) techniques, namely linear regression and time series analysis. Primarily, Multilinear Regression (MLR) model, supervised machine learning, is developed to predict AQI. NO2, Ozone(O2), PM 2.5, and SO2 sensor output collected from Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Chennai region, India, fed as input features and optimized AQI calculated from sensor's output set as a target to train the regression model. The obtained model parameters are validated with new and unseen sensor output. The Key Performance Indices (KPI) like coefficient of determination, root mean square error, and mean absolute error were calculated to validate the model accuracy. The K-cross-fold validation for testing data of MLR was obtained as around 92%. Secondly, the Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time series model is applied to forecast the AQI. The obtained model parameters were validated with unseen data with a timestamp. The forecasted AQI value of the next 15 days lies in a 95 % confidence interval zone. The model accuracy of test data was obtained as more than 80%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indoor air pollution (IAP) has become a serious concern for developing countries around the world. As human beings spend most of their time indoors, pollution exposure causes a significant impact on their health and well-being. Long term exposure to particulate matter (PM) leads to the risk of chronic health issues such as respiratory disease, lung cancer, cardiovascular disease. In India, around 200 million people use fuel for cooking and heating needs; out of which 0.4% use biogas; 0.1% electricity; 1.5% lignite, coal or charcoal; 2.9% kerosene; 8.9% cow dung cake; 28.6% liquified petroleum gas and 49% use firewood. Almost 70% of the Indian population lives in rural areas, and 80% of those households rely on biomass fuels for routine needs. With 1.3 million deaths per year, poor air quality is the second largest killer in India. Forecasting of indoor air quality (IAQ) can guide building occupants to take prompt actions for ventilation and management on useful time. This paper proposes prediction of IAQ using Keras optimizers and compares their prediction performance. The model is trained using real-time data collected from a cafeteria in the Chandigarh city using IoT sensor network. The main contribution of this paper is to provide a comparative study on the implementation of seven Keras Optimizers for IAQ prediction. The results show that SGD optimizer outperforms other optimizers to ensure adequate and reliable predictions with mean square error = 0.19, mean absolute error = 0.34, root mean square error = 0.43, R2 score = 0.999555, mean absolute percentage error = 1.21665%, and accuracy = 98.87%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loosening of rockmass during its excavation in an infrastructure project is carried by rock blasting. The blast-induced ground vibrations pose a major challenge to the blasting engineers, whose main objective is to control their potential to cause any damage to the buildings in the vicinity. The research reported in this paper explains how the error in the prediction of the Peak Particle Velocity (PPV) by the United States Bureau of Mines (USBM)-based approach can be minimised using machine learning techniques. The complex correlation between the blast parameter and the PPV value has been modelled using the least square boosted decision tree approach after the selection of the best suitable feature has been selected based on the correlation matrix. The proposed model automatically maps the input blast feature (SD) with the target PPV values by aggregating the decision of various weak learners. The generalization of the proposed model has been validated through a 5-fold cross-validation approach using a dataset comprising of two hundred blast records generated by monitoring the blasts at International airport site, Navi Mumbai, India. The assessment of the prognostic ability of the proposed model demonstrates that it has outperformed the USBM-based approach for PPV prediction. The results establish that the predictions by the pro- posed model are closer to the measured values than the other regression models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the penetration of solar power at residential and utility levels has progressed exponentially. However, due to its stochastic nature, the prediction of solar global horizontal irradiance (GHI) with higher accuracy is a challenging task; but, vital for grid management: planning, scheduling & balancing. Therefore, this paper proposes an ensemble model using the extended scope of wavelet transform (WT) and bidirectional long short term memory (BiLSTM) deep learning network to forecast 24-h ahead solar GHI. The WT decomposes the input time series data into different finite intrinsic model functions (IMF) to extract the statistical features of input time series. Further, the study reduces the number of IMF series by combining the wavelet decomposed components (D1-D6) series on the basis of comprehensive experimental analysis with an aim to improve the forecasting accuracy. Next, the trained standalone BiLSTM networks are allocated to each IMF sub-series to execute the forecasting. Finally, the forecasted values of each sub-series from BiLSTM networks are reconstructed to deliver the final solar GHI forecast. The study performed monthly solar GHI forecasting for one year dataset using one month moving window mechanism for the location of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. For the performance comparison, the naïve predictor as a benchmark model, standalone long short term memory (LSTM), gated recurrent unit (GRU), BiLSTM and two other wavelet-based BiLSTM models are also simulated. From the results, it is observed that the proposed model outperforms other models in terms of root mean square error (RMSE) & mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), coefficient of determination (R2) and forecast skill (FS). The proposed model reduces the monthly average RMSE by range from 26.04–58.89%, 5.17–31.35%, 23.26–56.06% & 21.08–57% in comparison with benchmark, standalone BiLSTM, GRU & LSTM networks respectively. On the other hand, the monthly average MAPE is reduced by range from 9 to 51.18%, 12.59–28.14%, 30.43–59.19% & 26.54–58.92% in comparison to benchmark, standalone BiLSTM, GRU & LSTM respectively. Further, the proposed model obtained the value of R2 equal to 0.94 and forecast skill (%) of 47% with reference to the benchmark model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have major impact to health and medical infrastructure, economy, and agriculture. Prominent computational and mathematical models have been unreliable due to the complexity of the spread of infections. Moreover, lack of data collection and reporting makes modelling attempts difficult and unreliable. Hence, we need to re-look at the situation with reliable data sources and innovative forecasting models. Deep learning models such as recurrent neural networks are well suited for modelling spatiotemporal sequences. In this paper, we apply recurrent neural networks such as long short term memory (LSTM), bidirectional LSTM, and encoder-decoder LSTM models for multi-step (short-term) COVID-19 infection forecasting. We select Indian states with COVID-19 hotpots and capture the first (2020) and second (2021) wave of infections and provide two months ahead forecast. Our model predicts that the likelihood of another wave of infections in October and November 2021 is low; however, the authorities need to be vigilant given emerging variants of the virus. The accuracy of the predictions motivate the application of the method in other countries and regions. Nevertheless, the challenges in modelling remain due to the reliability of data and difficulties in capturing factors such as population density, logistics, and social aspects such as culture and lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The world has historically faced and recovered from many pandemics. The most recent global pandemic that the whole world is facing is Novel Coronavirus - Covid-19. The objective of current study is to compare and forecast COVID-19 trends for Pakistan and India. Methods: The data set for this research is obtained from the World Health Organization (WHO) online repository (https://covid19.who.int/). The time period we have considered since the first corona related case and death were observed in both countries. This research paper analyzes corona related cases and deaths in Pakistan and India till 28th February 2021, a total of 578,797 cases in Pakistan and 11,096,731 cases in India has been confirmed including 128,37 and 1,570,51 deaths respectively. The Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model is used to forecast the variables cumulative cases and deaths. It is simple to use and more predictive than any other regression model. Results: Based on the current trend, the forecast graph reveals that the number of cumulative corona cases could reach 999,767 in Pakistan and 16,481,122 in India up to 31st December 2021. Conclusion: This research found that corona related cumulative cases and deaths are on the rise in both countries. The pandemic situation in India is worse than in Pakistan nevertheless both countries are at high risk. There is a sudden increasing pattern in the number of corona related cases in both countries. Both governments must impose effective policies to control this pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crop forecasting is a formidable challenge for every nation. The Government of India has developed a number of forecasting systems. The national and state governments need such pre-harvest forecasts for various policy decisions on storage, distribution, pricing, marketing, import-export and many more. In this paper, univariate forecasting models such as random walk, random walk with drift, moving average, simple exponential smoothing and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models are considered and analyzed for their efficiency for forecasting vegetable production in the Haryana state. The State annual data on vegetable production were divided into the training data set from 1966-67 to 2013-14 and the test data set from 2014-15 to 2018-19. Suitable models were selected on the basis of error analysis on the training data and a percent error deviation test on the test data. Model diagnostic checking was carried out on ACF and PACF in residual terms through runs above and below the median, runs up and down and Ljung-Box tests. It is inferred that ARIMA (2,1,1) was found to be optimal and that the forecast values for the years 2019-20 to 2023-24 were estimated on the basis of this model, which were 7.82,8.23,8.72,9.2 and 9.72 million tonnes for the year 2019-20 to 2023-24, respectively. The significance of the mode is that we can forecast the values using this best fit model and forecast values are very important for the policymakers and other government agencies for proper policy decision regarding food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Suicide is a major social and health issue in India. Yearly statistics show a concerning increasing pattern of suicidal deaths in India which is higher in comparison to the global trend. There is limited evidence regarding historical analysis of suicide or any forecasting for suicide in India towards predicting the possible risks of death due to suicide. Methods: This paper examines the trend of suicide rate and characteristics of suicide victims in India, based on the longitudinal time series data over the last 50 years—collected from the National Crime Record Bureau Reports (1969 to 2018) of the Government of India. In our analysis, we have used the time series model to forecast the suicide rates in India for the next decade. ARIMA (4,1,0) model is found to be the best fit model for forecasting the data. Findings: There has been an observable and rising trend of suicide rates in India over the last five decades. The forecast indicates a continuance of rising suicide cases for an upcoming couple of years in India with a limited decline in the following years. The prediction model indicates a future relatively consistent pattern of suicide in India which does not seem to be a very encouraging trend. As we have not included the period staring the year 2020 onwards affected by Covid-19 and which has several disruptions in personal and family spaces, the projected suicide trend during the period of next two to three years (2020–22) may rise far high and then it may show a declining path. Along with this, there is a shift in means of suicide in the last couple of decades. Constituting the second-highest number of cases, Illness associated suicide was visibly a serious concern. Conclusion: The present analysis finds that there is no visible substantial relief for suicide deaths during the coming years in India. On the other hand, more extensive exploration of sample cases may provide important information for suicide prevention. Availability of detailed and more inclusive data will be highly useful for analysis and suicide preventive policies. Investment in public health care and other welfare activities like education and employment generation will yield visible positive results in suicide control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changing population age structure has a significant influence on the economy, society, and numerous other aspects of a country. This paper has innovatively applied the method of compositional data forecasting for the prediction of population age changes of the young (aged 0–14), the middle-aged (aged 15–64), and the elderly (aged older than 65) in China, India, and Vietnam by 2030 based on data from 1960 to 2016. To select the best-suited forecasting model, an array of data transformation approaches and forecasting models have been extensively employed, and a large number of comparisons have been made between the aforementioned methods. The best-suited model for each country is identified considering the root mean squared error and mean absolute percent error values from the compositional data. As noted in this study, first and foremost, it is predicted that by the year 2030, China will witness the disappearance of population dividend and get mired in an aging problem far more severe than that of India or Vietnam. Second, Vietnam’s trend of change in population age structure resembles that of China, but the country will sustain its good health as a whole. Finally, the working population of India demonstrates a strong rising trend, indicating that the age structure of the Indian population still remains relatively “young”. Meanwhile, the continuous rise in the proportion of elderly population and the gradual leveling off growth of the young population have nevertheless become serious problems in the world. The present paper attempts to offer crucial insights into the Asian population size, labor market and urbanization, and, moreover, provides suggestions for a sustainable global demographic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The whole world is embroiling the pandemic situation caused by COVID-19, which is spreading across all countries. As of mid-May, COVID-19 continues to increase the number of people affected and the number of deaths in each country. Each country's administrations concerned are making endless efforts to maintain public health, mental health and to regulate the rate of illness of COVID-19. Analysis of COVID-19 data using the machine learning paradigm is becoming a major interest of the researcher in these situations. Several researchers analyzed data from COVID-19 to predict infection, death, cured persons in the future, which may lead to the planning of each country's regulatory authority to maintain the public health of its people. The machine learning algorithm provides more accurate results when the data size is large due to the lower number of data sets available to COVID-19, making the most accurate predictions a challenging task to implement the machine learning algorithm. This paper was essentially designed to predict the active rate, the death rate, and the cured rate in India by analyzing the data of COVID-19. There are three models of machine learning Support Vector Machine (SVM), Prophet Forecasting Model, and Linear Regression Model for predicting active rate, death rate and cured rate. Prophet Forecasting Model has been shown to be the best predictive method for predicting active rate, death rate and cured rate compared to SVM and Linear Regression when the vast uncertain and small data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Steady‐state forecasting is indispensable for power system planning and operation. A forecasting model for inputs considering their historical record is a preliminary step for such type of studies. Since the historical data quality is decisive in edifice an accurate forecasting model, data preprocessing is essential. Primarily, the quality of raw data is affected by the presence of outliers, and preprocessing refers to outlier detection and correction. In this paper, an effort is made to improve the existing sliding window prediction‐based preprocessing method. The recommended reforms are the calculation of appropriate window width and a new outlier correction approach. The proposed method denoted as improved sliding window prediction‐based preprocessing is applied to the historical data of PV generation, load power, and the ambient temperature of different time‐steps collected from various places in the United States and India. Firstly, the method's efficacy through detailed result analysis demonstrating the proposed preprocessing as a better way than its precursor and k‐nearest neighbor approach is presented. Later, the improved out‐of‐sample forecasting accuracy canonizes the proposed method's concert compared to both the above techniques and the case without preprocessing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a major and rising interest in India for increasing vaccination rate among peoples to make the nation healthier and safer. In this paper, a new hybrid deep learning model is proposed to predict and target vaccination rates in the less immunized regions. The Rank-Based Multi-Layer Perceptron (R-MLP) hybrid deep learning framework uses the data collected from the recently updated District Level Household Survey-4 (DLHS). R-MLP model predicts and categorizes the percentage of partly immunized vaccination rates as extreme, low and medium ranges. This predicted findings are cross-verified by Deep Soft Cosine Semantic and Ranking SVM based model (DSS-RSM). DSS-RSM model uses the data obtained from the medical practitioners through a location-based social network. The proposed model predicts and extracts patterns with high similarity frequency for identifying vulnerable low immunization regions. It classifies the predicted patterns into two classes such as Class 1 is denoted as high ranked regions and Class 2 is denoted as low ranked regions based on the percentage of pattern matches. Finally, the results from R-MLP and DSS-RSM models are cross-linked together using ensemble model. This model finds the loss values to identify the target regions were health care program need to be conducted for increasing the level of immunization among children's. The proposed hybrid deep learning models trains and validates using python-based Keras and TensorFlow deep learning libraries. The performance of the proposed hybrid deep learning model is compared with other variant machine learning techniques such as Decision Tree C5.0, Naive Bayes and Linear Regression. This comparative results are evaluated using evaluation measures such as Precision, Recall, Accuracy and F1-Measure. Our results show that the hybrid deep learning system is clearly superior to any other alternative approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ionospheric total electron content (TEC) plays a major role in the estimation of positional accuracy of satellite-based navigation systems. TEC disturbs the transmission of the signal transmitted from the satellite to receiver, which leads to range error. Hence, the prediction of VTEC can rectify the range errors in advance. Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) is a navigational satellite system that gives position of a user and time information in India. NavIC receiver is installed at ACSCE, Bangalore, and it is utilized to estimate vertical total electron content (VTEC). In this paper, VTEC estimated from ACSCE station and VTEC obtained from IISC station, Bangalore, are compared and also ordinary kriging-based surrogate model (OKSM) and cokriging-based surrogate model (COKSM) are developed for forecasting NavIC/GPS VTEC. In these models, input parameters comprise the time, Bt, SSN, Ap and F10.7. NavIC and GPS VTEC are predicted for quiet days, i.e. from 16/1/2018 to 26/1/2018 and from 7/8/2018 to 13/8/2018, by using previous one week of VTEC data, and input parameters belong to ACSCE (12.8914° N, 77.4657° E) and IISC (13.0219° N, 77.5671° E) stations, Bangalore. The VTEC prediction results from OKSM and COKSM are compared. It shows that OKSM results are comparatively better than COKSM. In order to validate our developed models, OKSM and COKSM prediction results are compared with the SWIF model during storm days. Based on the comparison, it is observed that RMSE of OKSM is 3.5202 TECU, COKSM gives RMSE as 4.7126 TECU, and the SWIF model's RMSE is 4.6804. From the comparison results, it is evident that OKSM yields better prediction results than COKSM and SWIF. These results indicate that the proposed model will be useful for correcting range measurement data in advance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The elimination programme for visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in India has seen great progress, with total cases decreasing by over 80% since 2010 and many blocks now reporting zero cases from year to year. Prompt diagnosis and treatment is critical to continue progress and avoid epidemics in the increasingly susceptible population. Short-term forecasts could be used to highlight anomalies in incidence and support health service logistics. The model which best fits the data is not necessarily most useful for prediction, yet little empirical work has been done to investigate the balance between fit and predictive performance. Methodology/Principal findings: We developed statistical models of monthly VL case counts at block level. By evaluating a set of randomly-generated models, we found that fit and one-month-ahead prediction were strongly correlated and that rolling updates to model parameters as data accrued were not crucial for accurate prediction. The final model incorporated auto-regression over four months, spatial correlation between neighbouring blocks, and seasonality. Ninety-four percent of 10-90% prediction intervals from this model captured the observed count during a 24-month test period. Comparison of one-, three- and four-month-ahead predictions from the final model fit demonstrated that a longer time horizon yielded only a small sacrifice in predictive power for the vast majority of blocks. Conclusions/Significance: The model developed is informed by routinely-collected surveillance data as it accumulates, and predictions are sufficiently accurate and precise to be useful. Such forecasts could, for example, be used to guide stock requirements for rapid diagnostic tests and drugs. More comprehensive data on factors thought to influence geographic variation in VL burden could be incorporated, and might better explain the heterogeneity between blocks and improve uniformity of predictive performance. Integration of the approach in the management of the VL programme would be an important step to ensuring continued successful control. Author summary: This paper demonstrates a statistical modelling approach for forecasting of monthly visceral leishmaniasis (VL) incidence at block level in India, which could be used to tailor control efforts according to local estimates and monitor deviations from the currently decreasing trend. By fitting a variety of models to four years of historical data and assessing predictions within a further 24-month test period, we found that the model which best fit the observed data also showed the best predictive performance, and predictive accuracy was maintained when making rolling predictions up to four months ahead of the observed data. Since there is a two-month delay between reporting and processing of the data, predictive power more than three months ahead of current data is crucial to make forecasts which can feasibly be acted upon. Some heterogeneity remains in predictive power across the study region which could potentially be improved using unit-specific data on factors believed to be associated with reported VL incidence (e.g. age distribution, socio-economic status and climate). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forecasting of Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR) is a complex problem for the hydrologists and meteorologists. The time series and data-driven methods have been used as complementary tools for forecasting ISMR against the complex physically based dynamical models due to scarcity of data and the simplicity of former approaches. The use of hybrid decomposition data–driven models is the recent improvement among the different approaches for rainfall forecasting, but these approaches differ significantly in the framework adopted. This paper presents an adaptive hybrid modelling framework so called Adaptive Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition-Artificial Neural Network (AEEMD-ANN) model for forecasting ISMR, which performs the forecasts adaptively as and when new information is added. The performance of the popular EEMD-ANN hybrid hindcast and forecast experiments in the prediction of All-India SMR and southwest monsoon rainfall of the state of Kerala is compared with the proposed method. The AEEMD-ANN method achieved a predictive skill of 0.78 and 0.91, respectively for rainfall predictions for Kerala and All-India. AEEMD-ANN method performed reasonably well in capturing the hydrologic extremes when compared with EEMD-ANN forecast method, with better accuracy in capturing the drought years. The proposed method is found to be successful in capturing the extreme low SWM rainfall of year 2002 for All-India and the extreme high rainfall of Kerala 2018 with an error percentage of 1.09% and 0.52%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eastern Regional (ER) grid of India is one of the five regional grids consisting of voltage level 765 kV, 400 kV, 220 kV and numerous buses at lower voltage range. ER grid is the backbone of the Indian Grid as it is one of the main power generating hubs. Stability of the Indian Grid depends a lot on ER grid as it is the core of the generation and transmission system. For performing stability studies and to determine the weak area of the grid generally L-Index method is used. For detailed analysis like computation of voltage recovery time, maximum frequency deviation and critical clearing time of the buses of the system L-Index method is not suitable. Hence dynamic simulation is performed as it provides options to compute various parameters of ER Grid. The system has been studied using 197 buses of voltage levels 220 kV and above and transmission lines running over a length of 23,693 km. In this paper the power flow modelling, simulation and analysis of the Eastern Grid of India is performed. L-Index algorithm along with dynamic simulation provides the scope of computation of voltage recovery time, maximum frequency deviation and critical clearing time (by introducing an initial transient disturbance) along with the prediction of weak area of the system which gives a complete picture of transient stability of ER Grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 classified under emerging infectious diseases has spread across the world resulting in many casualties. India reported its first case on 30th January 2020 and has completed 100 days in this pandemic period. The government of India has issued stringent guidelines and imposed a lockdown for long periods to ensure the practising of social distancing. This paper reviews and discusses the current trends in the confirmed cases of India in comparison with the other prominent countries around the globe. A novel approach using a sigmoid function to predict and forecast the trends for cases in India are also presented in this work. By placing the current time on the sigmoid curve, forecasting the total number of confirmed cases by the end of the pandemic is made. If proper measures and stringent guidelines are not followed, India may have to endure a total confirmed case of up to 4.4 lakh. The prediction also suggests that 99.9% of the pandemic may end in India by 27th July 2020. The best possible approach is to undertake preventive measures by strictly adhering to the guidelines and policies set by the government. Performing hand hygiene, practicing social distancing, surveillance and isolation is the only means to break the chain of transmission and control the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 classified under emerging infectious diseases has spread across the world resulting in many casualties. India reported its first case on 30th January 2020 and has completed 100 days in this pandemic period. The government of India has issued stringent guidelines and imposed a lockdown for long periods to ensure the practising of social distancing. This paper reviews and discusses the current trends in the confirmed cases of India in comparison with the other prominent countries around the globe. A novel approach using a sigmoid function to predict and forecast the trends for cases in India are also presented in this work. By placing the current time on the sigmoid curve, forecasting the total number of confirmed cases by the end of the pandemic is made. If proper measures and stringent guidelines are not followed, India may have to endure a total confirmed case of up to 4.4 lakh. The prediction also suggests that 99.9% of the pandemic may end in India by 27th July 2020. The best possible approach is to undertake preventive measures by strictly adhering to the guidelines and policies set by the government. Performing hand hygiene, practicing social distancing, surveillance and isolation is the only means to break the chain of transmission and control the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy plays a major role in the manufacturing process. Technologies used for energy generation and resource utilization were changing very fast. Conventional and nonconventional energy generation process leads to change in the energy recovery pattern. Forecasting of energy needs to be done based on the energy analysis and availability of resources. Dependency on the fossil fuel is more in India, which needs to be relooked for making Indian power sector more energy secure and reliable in the coming decades. In this paper, an attempt is made to forecast the energy generation for the 10 years (2015–2025) from municipal solid waste (MSW) in Faridabad, Haryana, India. Forecasting of MSW was analyzed based on three collection efficiencies (50%, 70%, and 80%) in Faridabad. The result shows that 2.65 kg of MSW is required to generate one unit of electrical energy with thermal conversion system. It was also obtained that approximate 2% of required electrical energy would be obtained from waste-to-energy (WTE) system in Faridabad over a period of 10 years (2015–2025). The result presented here could be a decision matrix for municipalities to develop effective waste management system for upcoming smart cities in India. Moreover, another novelty of this study reflects that cities having similar waste characteristics and population index could adopt this study for waste management and energy recovery. Proposed WTE system would reduce volume of the solid waste thereby improve environment of the city. Abbreviations: CPCB: Central Pollution Control BoardWTE: Waste-to-energyMSW: Municipal solid wasteTPD: Tons per dayGDP: Gross domestic productKcal: Kilo caloriekg: KilogramKwh: Kilo watt hourMW: MegawattMT: Metric tonCHP: Combined heat and power [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new hybrid season specific approach to incorporate the seasonality effect in short term load forecasting (STLF). A new season specific similarity concept (SSSC) is utilized to perceive the season specific meteorological necessities (seasonality effect) and integrates them in STLF process. The proposed approach is based on firefly algorithm (FA), support vector machine (SVM) and the new SSSC. The study is conducted in Assam, India and the proposed approach is designed to forecast load during different seasonal native meteorological conditions. Four case studies in four different seasons of a calendar year are carried out. The consideration of seasonality effect is found essential for a precise STLF under diverse seasonal meteorological conditions. This is because the electric load is influenced by different meteorological variables depending on different seasons. The numerical application of the proposed approach demonstrates higher forecasting accuracy in comparison to traditional approach of integrating temperature into STLF without considering any seasonality effect. To uphold the efficacy of the proposed approach, forecasting results are also compared with another traditional approach of integrating multiple meteorological variables into STLF without any seasonal considerations. Hence, the robustness of proposed approach is approved by its superior forecasting ability in all cases. • Offers a season specific approach for short term load forecasting in the study area. • Evaluation of season specific effective meteorological variables on load demand. • Proposes new season specific similarity concept to integrate the seasonality effect. • Integration of ineffective meteorological variable misguide the forecasting process. • The results affirm the superiority of the proposed approach in load forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's restructuring electricity market, short-term load forecasting (STLF) is an essential tool for the electricity utilities to predict future scenario and act towards a profitable policy. The electric load demand is highly influenced by the thermal inertia due to the climatic factors. These influential climatic factors are different in different regions. Therefore, it is necessary to have a region specific STLF model for load forecasting under regional climatic conditions. This paper proposes a regional hybrid STLF model utilizing SVM with a new technique, called grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA), to evaluate its suitable parameters. This study is carried out in Assam, a state of India and proposed GOA-SVM model is targeted for forecasting the load under local climatic conditions. The proposed model uses the similar day approach (SDA) to satisfy the regional climatic requirements. The results of the proposed model show better accuracy comparing to results generated with classical STLF model of incorporating temperature universally as the only climatic factor. To further affirm the efficacy of the proposed model, same inputs are delivered in two alternative hybrid models, namely GA-SVM (GA with SVM) and PSO-SVM (PSO with SVM). The results indicate that the proposed model outperforms the other hybrid models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the new economy, strategic alliances enable business to gain competitive advantages through access to partner's resources, including markets, technologies, capital and people. In the context of the provision of the Electricity Act in 2003 has allowed a dynamic competitive growth of public sector and private sector in Indian electricity market, it becomes critical for Indian electricity firms to enter strategic alliance to improve business performance and competitive advantages by seeking right partners that augment strengths or ameliorate weaknesses. Over the 5-year time frame in the past to have 4-year forecasting, this paper tries to suggest a new approach of integrated GM (1,1), neural network and DEA model in order to assist Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation in selecting its right strategic alliance partner. The results indicate that Power Grid Corporation and Reliance Infrastructure are the very best candidates for Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation to form strategic alliances. The findings are not only good for the target company but also beneficial for the partners. Furthermore, the proposed method allows upper management to properly adjust input and output factors for industry, based on their calculations for reference purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmentally conscious manufacturing (ECM) has become an important strategy and proactive approach for the iron and steel sector of India to produce environment friendly and to reduce manufacturing cost. There are several environmentally conscious manufacturing indicators to evaluate ECM programs. Among those indicators, energy consumption and greenhouse (GHG) emission may be considered critical environmentally conscious manufacturing indicators (CECMI) for Indian iron and steel sector. This paper focuses on forecasting energy consumption and GHG emission for a pig iron manufacturing organization of India because the managers are interested to know the current and future trends of these indicators for better environmental policy. For forecasting purpose, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) is applied to reveal that ARIMA (1,0,0) × (0,1,1) is the best fitted model for energy consumption. Regarding GHG emission, ARIMA (0,1,4) × (0,1,1) is the best fitted model. In both cases, the forecasts resemble those of the seasonal random trend model, however they appear smoother because the seasonal pattern and the trend are efficiently averaged for energy consumption and as well as GHG emission. Selection of the correct ARIMA models for these indicators will help in accurate forecasting in order to achieve better environmental management practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current social work education in India reflects globalization priorities and tendencies of neo-colonialism that emulate curriculum priorities and duplicate content developed in countries like the USA. Social work education as implemented by countries like the USA, has limited success in transnational training of social workers and their ability to address emerging social problems and deep rooted structural imbalances within non-USA social contexts. Yet, the concept of the world being an emerging global village is used to justify and reaffirm the colonial goals of universal education and pedagogies within social work and its application to starkly different contexts, such as India. This paper argues against the imperialist nature of social work education through examples from social work syllabi from Indian schools of social work. Secondly, this paper examines the role of academic collaborations and international organizations in addressing the challenges in curriculum development. Finally, through an example from a Curriculum Development Project undertaken in a sub-Saharan African country by one of the authors, the paper demonstrates ways of generating more local content for curricula that would create culturally sensitive social services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper describes a methodology by which modelers, ecologists and planners can quantify the certainty in predicting the location of change for a given quantity of change. The specification of the quantity of a land cover category and the specification of the location of a land cover category are two distinct fundamental concepts in geographical analysis. It is crucial that scientists have appropriate quantitative tools to analyze each of these two concepts independently of one another. This paper gives methods whereby a scientist can convert a map of relative propensity for disturbance to a map of probability of future disturbance, based on a quantifiable validation of a map's predictive ability. The required inputs are: (1) maps that show a Boolean categorical variable at times 0, 1 and 2, (2) a technique to create a map that shows the relative propensity for membership in the Boolean category, and (3) a predicted proportion of the category at time 3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Day-ahead load forecasting plays a crucial role in operation and management of power systems. Weather conditions have a significant impact on daily load profile, hence, it follows an almost similar pattern within a season. However, it varies markedly across the seasons. Existing literature on load forecasting adopts a very casual approach in considering the seasonality, based on either calendar month or some meteorological parameter, which is inconsistent and inaccurate, especially during transition periods, thus leading to high forecasting errors. This paper proposes a novel seasonal segmentation approach for day-ahead load forecasting that uses multiple bidirectional Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) networks. An index has been derived from various weather parameters that govern the selection of seasonal models for forecasting purposes. Weighted output from multiple seasonal models is also possible in special cases for better forecasting accuracy. The proposed seasonal segmentation approach avoids the need for frequent model retraining and results in a better forecast accuracy with a relatively simple LSTM structure. The performance of the proposed method has been validated and compared on the actual load data of Madhya Pradesh state (MP), India. The improved results suggest that the proposed approach can be applied reliably for load scheduling applications. • An encoder-decoder Bi-LSTM model with attention is developed to train the models. • An adaptive method for accurate identification of seasonal duration is proposed. • An index based selective and weighted method is developed for optimized forecasts. • Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) is used to adaptively select the forecast models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B Correction to: Theoretical and Applied Climatology b https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-04168-4 The affiliation of one of the authors (Pranaya Diwate) has been wrongly mentioned in the paper. Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. [Extracted from the article]

This paper seeks to answer two questions in the context of the Indian economy. First, are all movements in food and energy prices transitory? Second, is there a significant relationship between permanent and transitory shocks to different components of the aggregate price level? Using monthly price data for India and a multivariate correlated unobserved component model based on Morley et al. ((2003). The Review of Economics and Statistics, 85(2): 235) and Bradley et al. (forthcoming), we find that both food and energy prices have significant permanent components. Further, we find a significant feedback effect between permanent components of food prices and manufacturing good prices. These findings suggest that neglecting food and energy prices may render the core inflation measure based solely on manufacturing prices a biased measure of long run inflation. Finally, using a forecasting experiment, we show that a measure of the trend inflation that explicitly accounts for long run price movements in food and energy prices provides a superior forecast of future inflation when compared with alternative measures of the trend inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An accurate and objective prediction of coal consumption is important for stabilizing the coal market, ensuring the operating results of coal enterprises. This paper starts with the background value of the traditional GM(1,1) model, extends the model by the extrapolation method, proposes an optimized grey prediction model, deduces the time response equation, studies the relationship between model parameters and model accuracy. Then the model is optimized by simulated annealing algorithm. Three cases verify the validity of model, the results show that its lowest prediction error percentage is 3.1286%, which is better than two classical grey prediction models, Finally, the model is applied to forecast the next five years' consumption of China, India and the United States, which are the world's top three coal consumers. The errors of the proposed models are all about 5%, which is obviously better than the comparison models. The results show that coal consumption in China and India will continue to rise over the next five years, while the United States will decline. These findings are consistent with the current development of the three countries; therefore, the optimized prediction model can effectively predict the coal consumption of the three countries. • The highlights of this article are as follows: • An optimized grey prediction model that can be applied to various data situations is proposed. • The traditional GM(1,1) model is optimized by a simulated annealing algorithm. • The validity of the model is verified by theoretical deduction and case analysis. • The generality and wide applicability of the proposed method are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two main challenges of predicting the wind speed depend on various atmospheric factors and random variables. This paper explores the possibility of developing a wind speed prediction model using different Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and Categorical Regression empirical model which could be used to estimate the wind speed in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India using SPSS software. The proposed Neural Network models are tested on real time wind data and enhanced with statistical capabilities. The objective is to predict accurate wind speed and to perform better in terms of minimization of errors using Multi Layer Perception Neural Network (MLPNN), Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFNN) and Categorical Regression (CATREG). Results from the paper have shown good agreement between the estimated and measured values of wind speed. According to the result, it can be concluded that ANN model with MLPNN could produce the acceptable prediction of the wind speed for given on wind direction. • To predict the wind speed (m/sec) at 65 m height. • To build the ANN Models and Categorical Regression (CATREG) for wind speed prediction. • To produce the validated and acceptable prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intervention programs aimed at preventing tobacco use among youth have been shown to be effective in curbing tobacco use onset and progression. However, the effects of even very successful tobacco prevention programs may not always impress policy-makers and lay audiences. Economic analysis potentially strengthens the case. In this paper, we evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a youth tobacco use prevention program which has been translated and implemented in India, a developing country. Although programs like these are inexpensive to implement in the USA, they are even less expensive in India due to low labor costs. Our results show that the costs per quality-adjusted life-year added, due to averted smoking, was $2057, even without including averted medical costs. If we ignore student time, cost-effectiveness improves by roughly 10%. To put the cost-effectiveness of this smoking prevention program into context, it is over 24 times more cost-effective than dialysis in the USA, which costs $50 000 for a life-year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The objective of this study is to analyze health effects of arsenic pollution of drinking water using a geographical information system (GIS). The paper reports the regional impact of arsenic contamination in six administrative blocks of the central part of the Murshidabad district, West Bengal, India. In this area about 1,248,580 people are exposed to arsenic pollution out of whom 388,316 people are exposed to arsenic concentrations above 0.05 mg/L, the WHO maximum permissible level of arsenic in drinking water. The study estimates that 65% of the total area of the six blocks has arsenic concentrations below 0.05 mg/L, 26.12% of the area has arsenic concentrations above 0.05 mg/L, and for the rest of the area no arsenic distribution data available. The total number of expected death cases has been estimated considering the percent of risk involved in a concentration range and corresponding total population using such water for drinking purpose. The analysis forecasts that 11,890 people may risk death due to arsenic pollution in the whole life span. The maximum number of death cases is expected in Domkal and Beldanga 1 blocks and the minimum number of death cases is expected in Block Bhagabangola 2. This study also reports a comparison between the theoretical expectation of death cases and actual reported arsenicosis cases for the Domkal block. The areas of theoretical expectation and the areas of actually reported cases match fairly well except in a few cases. The present study helps planning and implementing of priority-based arsenic mitigation options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rice is the staple food in many countries and is grown in varied climates from per-humid to semiarid areas. Crop–weather models were used to predict rice yield in India. However, in spite of a significant influence of solar radiation on rice yield, none of these models used solar radiation as one of the predictors. In this paper, an attempt was made to predict the first season (June–September) rice yield at Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India by including solar radiation as one of the predictors. Ten years (1987/88–1996/97) data were used for the study. Seven predictors viz., percentage of rice area during first season (X1 ), number of days with minimum temperature below 22 °C in August and September (X2 ), average daily maximum temperature for three months (July, August and September; X3 ), average daily minimum temperature for three months (July, August and September; X4 ), total of average sunshine hours in August and September (X5 ), and total rainfall of July, August and September (X6 ) total average solar radiation of August and September (X7 ) were selected based on earlier report. Full model and stepwise regression analysis were performed using MSTAT computer package. The full model regression without solar radiation as predictor (Model I) recorded comparatively less R2 (0.6292). Inclusion of solar radiation (Model II) enhanced the R2 value considerably (R2 =0.9464). Seven variables were further subjected to stepwise regression analysis and only four predictors were retained in the final model (Model III) with an R2 value of 0.9234. The model III with minimum parameters Y=22119.5758 + 19.6898, X1 - 150.9261, X2 - 1126.7501, X4 + 0.7179 X7 can be used to predict the first season rice yield (Y) at Coimbatore, India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the analysis of the ability of the operational global ensemble prediction system (EPS) at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF, NEPS in predicting the probabilities of the maximum 2 m temperature (TMAX). The mean of the TMAX forecasts from NEPS are bias corrected (1st moment) using the technique of Decaying Average. This method does not lead to any correction in the spread of the EPS. Therefore the method of Variation Inflation is used to correct the spread (2nd moment) of NEPS. The forecasts of TMAX from the raw and the bias corrected data are then compared for March to May 2019 using standard verification metrics for probabilistic forecasts like Brier Score (BS), Brier Skill Score (BSS), ROC and Reliability Diagrams as well as the Value score. A case by case comparison of several heat wave cases during March to May 2019 is also performed in order to assess the day-to-day performance of the model. The forecasts after bias correction in the mean (1st moment) show a large improvement in terms of reduced false alarms and increased hit rate. However these forecasts show a reduced reliability in terms of under forecasting events with low probabilities and over forecasting events with high probabilities. The analysis of the forecast reliability after the correction of both the mean and the spread (1st and 2nd moments) shows an improvement in reliability. The forecasts with correction in the spread show a slight decrease in the ROC (i.e., increased false alarms) as compared to forecasts with just the corrected mean but the improvement in the reliability is appreciable. Thus the study demonstrates improved skill in probabilistic forecasts of TMAX over India during MAM 2019. • Prediction of heat waves over India using and ensemble prediction system • Improving forecast quality and skill by bias correction • Correction in the ensemble mean and spread. • Calculation of Relative Economic Value for heat wave forecasts [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]