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In recent years, deep learning (DL) approaches have been proven effective in addressing high nonlinear relationships within complex systems. Although various scientific studies have primarily focused on optimizing model architecture and enhancing its computational efficiency through hybridization, they have neglected the crucial aspect of selecting appropriate predictor variables (PV) and their influence on the model's predictions. In this paper, a new multi-phase stochastic DL model is designed with a feature selection framework for monthly streamflow prediction. The multi-phase hybrid MCMC–BC–BiLSTM–BiGRU model is based on bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) and bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU) integrated with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based bivariate copulas (BC). First, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm was employed for screening optimal PV, and then significant antecedent streamflow was coupled with it to generate optimized input combinations. In addition, 25 different MCMC–BC models were adopted for each input combination to determine the dependency of previous month's streamflow on current and future streamflow. Finally, best-fitted MCMC–BC model was integrated with hybrid BILSTM–BiGRU model to predict streamflow at nine different catchments in the Victoria region of the Upper Murray Basin (UMB), Australia. The experimental results show that the multi-phase hybrid MCMC–BC–BiLSTM–BiGRU model showed remarkable performance in comparison to its benchmark counterparts with respect to different robust statistical error metrics. Therefore, this study demonstrates that stochastic DL techniques can be effectively employed as a promising alternative predictive tool for upstream discharge predictions with high consistency and accuracy, specifically when a statistically significant relationship with the antecedent streamflow exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an innovative framework for wind power prediction that focuses on the future of energy forecasting utilizing intelligent deep learning and strategic feature engineering. This research investigates the application of a state-of-the-art deep learning model for wind energy prediction to make extremely short-term forecasts using real-time data on wind generation from New South Wales, Australia. In contrast with typical approaches to wind energy forecasting, this model relies entirely on historical data and strategic feature engineering to make predictions, rather than relying on meteorological parameters. A hybrid feature engineering strategy that integrates features from several feature generation techniques to obtain the optimal input parameters is a significant contribution to this work. The model's performance is assessed using key metrics, yielding optimal results with a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 8.76, Mean Squared Error (MSE) of 139.49, Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 11.81, R-squared score of 0.997, and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 4.85%. Additionally, the proposed framework outperforms six other deep learning and hybrid deep learning models in terms of wind energy prediction accuracy. These findings highlight the importance of advanced data analysis for feature generation in data processing, pointing to its key role in boosting the precision of forecasting applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large proportion of photovoltaic (PV) power generation is connected to the power grid, and its volatility and stochasticity have significant impacts on the power system. Accurate PV power forecasting is of great significance in optimizing the safe operation of the power grid and power market transactions. In this paper, a novel dual-channel PV power forecasting method based on a temporal convolutional network (TCN) is proposed. The method deeply integrates the PV station feature data with the model computing mechanism through the dual-channel model architecture; utilizes the combination of multihead attention (MHA) and TCN to extract the multidimensional spatio-temporal features between other meteorological variables and the PV power; and utilizes a single TCN to fully extract the temporal constraints of the power sequence elements. The weighted fusion of the dual-channel feature data ultimately yields the ideal forecasting results. The experimental data in this study are from a 26.52 kW PV power plant in central Australia. The experiments were carried out over seven different input window widths, and the two models that currently show superior performance within the field of PV power forecasting: the convolutional neural network (CNN), and the convolutional neural network combined with a long and short-term memory network (CNN_LSTM), are used as the baseline models. The experimental results show that the proposed model and the baseline models both obtained the best forecasting performance over a 1-day input window width, while the proposed model exhibited superior forecasting performance compared to the baseline model. It also shows that designing model architectures that deeply integrate the data input method with the model mechanism has research potential in the field of PV power forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Skills development for business students is increasingly becoming more important in business education and the workplace. In this paper, students' research skills are examined. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the issues and challenges students face in developing research skills and how these can be addressed. Design/methodology/approach: The study combines external marker evaluation and content analysis to evaluate one hundred 2,000-word essays and identify issues and challenges associated with students' development of research skills. Findings: Results show that the essays rate well in collecting and using sources and summarising key topics but miss on integrating sources in writing and inconsistency in citations and referencing. Research limitations/implications: One of the paper's limitations is using a sample from a single course in a business school in Australia. Nonetheless, the sampled essays represent similar writing tasks elsewhere that require students to display research skills. Practical implications: Some implications for business and higher education are offered, including suggestions to address the issues and challenges raised in business education. For example, academics are encouraged to communicate clear expectations for writing tasks, provide support and show exemplars of business writing that incorporates practical research skills. Social implications: Business students who develop effective research skills contribute to society by developing skills in effectively searching and evaluating information. This ensures business graduates in industry workplaces reach considered conclusions before making recommendations that could impact people's lives. Originality/value: The study is original in its approach to investigating the nuances of research skills deficiencies by using external expert examination combined with content analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in women. The early detection of breast cancer with screening mammograms plays a pivotal role in reducing mortality rates. Although population-based double-reading screening mammograms have reduced mortality by over 31% in women with breast cancer in Europe, continuing this program is difficult due to the shortage of radiologists. Artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging technology that has provided promising results in medical imaging for disease detection. This study investigates the performance of AI models on an Australian mammographic database, demonstrating how transfer learning from a USA mammographic database to an Australian one, contrast enhancement on mammographic images and the quality of training data according to radiologists' concordance can improve breast cancer diagnosis. Our proposed methodology offers a more efficacious approach for AI to contribute to radiologists' decision making when interpreting mammography images. This paper investigates the adaptability of four state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) models to the Australian mammographic context through transfer learning, explores the impact of image enhancement on model performance and analyses the relationship between AI outputs and histopathological features for clinical relevance and accuracy assessment. A total of 1712 screening mammograms (n = 856 cancer cases and n = 856 matched normal cases) were used in this study. The 856 cases with cancer lesions were annotated by two expert radiologists and the level of concordance between their annotations was used to establish two sets: a 'high-concordances subset' with 99% agreement of cancer location and an 'entire dataset' with all cases included. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was used to evaluate the performance of Globally aware Multiple Instance Classifier (GMIC), Global-Local Activation Maps (GLAM), I&H and End2End AI models, both in the pretrained and transfer learning modes, with and without applying the Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) algorithm. The four AI models with and without transfer learning in the high-concordance subset outperformed those in the entire dataset. Applying the CLAHE algorithm to mammograms improved the performance of the AI models. In the high-concordance subset with the transfer learning and CLAHE algorithm applied, the AUC of the GMIC model was highest (0.912), followed by the GLAM model (0.909), I&H (0.893) and End2End (0.875). There were significant differences (p < 0.05) in the performances of the four AI models between the high-concordance subset and the entire dataset. The AI models demonstrated significant differences in malignancy probability concerning different tumour size categories in mammograms. The performance of AI models was affected by several factors such as concordance classification, image enhancement and transfer learning. Mammograms with a strong concordance with radiologists' annotations, applying image enhancement and transfer learning could enhance the accuracy of AI models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimating depth from RGB images is a long-standing ill-posed problem, which has been explored for decades by the computer vision, graphics, and machine learning communities. Among the existing techniques, stereo matching remains one of the most widely used in the literature due to its strong connection to the human binocular system. Traditionally, stereo-based depth estimation has been addressed through matching hand-crafted features across multiple images. Despite the extensive amount of research, these traditional techniques still suffer in the presence of highly textured areas, large uniform regions, and occlusions. Motivated by their growing success in solving various 2D and 3D vision problems, deep learning for stereo-based depth estimation has attracted a growing interest from the community, with more than 150 papers published in this area between 2014 and 2019. This new generation of methods has demonstrated a significant leap in performance, enabling applications such as autonomous driving and augmented reality. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of this new and continuously growing field of research, summarize the most commonly used pipelines, and discuss their benefits and limitations. In retrospect of what has been achieved so far, we also conjecture what the future may hold for deep learning-based stereo for depth estimation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate land valuation is necessary for tax purposes, land resources allocation, real estate management and urban development and planning. Since various factors from different domains affect land prices through non-linear relationships, automating the land valuation process on a large scale is a complex task. Advanced technologies in big data analysis and artificial intelligence have demonstrated superior capabilities in knowledge extraction in such cases. Accordingly, this paper develops and compares the performance of four Automated Valuation Models (AVMs) based on machine learning and deep learning techniques utilizing physical, geographical, socio-economic, environmental, legal and planning factors in Melbourne Metropolitan, Australia. According to the results, the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) method outperforms other algorithms of Support Vector Regression (SVR), random forest and Deep Neural Network (DNN). This method has achieved the coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.862, Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 0.139, and normalized Root Mean Square Error (nRMSE) of 0.281. The achieved high accuracy is due to incorporating a wide range of driving factors and applying innovative feature selection and hyperparameter tuning procedures evaluating various possible feature sets and hyperparameters. Accordingly, this paper can contribute to research, governmental and industry-based activities in terms of developing AVMs for mass land valuation. • Automated land valuation models using machine learning and deep learning • Comprehensive feature set and hybrid feature selection process for robust model performance • Spatial mapping of land values in large urban areas • Contribution to fair housing policies and urban development by accurate land valuation • Practical insights for housing affordability strategies in terms of land management [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In past few decades, there was a tremendous enhancement in natural disaster and their effects on economy and population. An adverse events like floods, wildfires, cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc., are regarded as a natural disaster once it strikes the vulnerable population areas. An early tracking of susceptibility areas and immediate tracking of affected areas might help in facilitating rescue and early warnings to the public. To achieve autonomous natural disaster prediction, this paper makes use of current developments in remote sensing, which speed up the availability of aerial/satellite data and are reinforced by progress in the computing sector. The aerial/satellite imageries are employed for acquiring the data from areas of Queensland-Australia that are more prone to natural disaster in an eagle-eye perspective. Since there were several techniques employed so far for the automatic prediction of natural disaster susceptibilities, there were some limitations like reduced rate of accuracy and so on. So as to overcome these limitations, deep learning based automated process is employed for predicting the natural disaster areas and probability of event occurrences. The main intention of the work is to detect the natural disaster occurrence from the sensed data which aids in providing warning to public and to safeguard them by taking necessary actions. Initially, remote sensing data is pre-processed and the features are extracted using Adaptive linear Internal embedding algorithm-based feature extraction (ALIE-FE). The extracted features are selected using Recursive Wrapper-based feature subset selection. To estimate best fitness function and to enhance the prediction accuracy, the optimization process is carried using Bio-Inspired Squirrel Search Optimization algorithm (BI-SSOA). Finally, the classification is carried by means of Deep learning based Multi-layer Alex Net classifier (DBMLA) approach. The simulation is carried and the outcomes attained are estimated for predicting flood susceptibility and wildfire susceptibility. The proposed BISSOA-DBMLA offers sensitivity of 98%, specificity of 99%, and TSS of 97%. The proposed system offers 98.99% classification accuracy. Accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, TSS, and area under the curve (AUC) are used to evaluate the efficacy of the suggested system in light of the achieved results from other approaches. To demonstrate the efficacy of the suggested mechanism, the achieved results are compared with those of current approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy forecasting plays a vital role in mitigating challenges in data rich smart grid (SG) systems involving various applications such as demand‐side management, load shedding, and optimum dispatch. Managing efficient forecasting while ensuring the least possible prediction error is one of the main challenges posed in the grid today, considering the uncertainty in SG data. This paper presents a comprehensive and application‐oriented review of state‐of‐the‐art forecasting methods for SG systems along with recent developments in probabilistic deep learning (PDL). Traditional point forecasting methods including statistical, machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL) are extensively investigated in terms of their applicability to energy forecasting. In addition, the significance of hybrid and data pre‐processing techniques to support forecasting performance is also studied. A comparative case study using the Victorian electricity consumption in Australia and American electric power (AEP) datasets is conducted to analyze the performance of deterministic and probabilistic forecasting methods. The analysis demonstrates higher efficacy of DL methods with appropriate hyper‐parameter tuning when sample sizes are larger and involve nonlinear patterns. Furthermore, PDL methods are found to achieve at least 60% lower prediction errors in comparison to other benchmark DL methods. However, the execution time increases significantly for PDL methods due to large sample space and a tradeoff between computational performance and forecasting accuracy needs to be maintained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High precision short-term photovoltaic (PV) power prediction can reduce the damage associated with large-scale photovoltaic grid-connection to the power system. In this paper, a combination deep learning forecasting method based on variational mode decomposition (VMD), a fast correlation-based filter (FCBF) and bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) network is developed to minimize PV power forecasting error. In this model, VMD is used to extract the trend feature of PV power, then FCBF is adopted to select the optimal input-set to reduce the forecasting error caused by the redundant feature. Finally, the input-set is put into the BiLSTM network for training and testing. The performance of this model is tested by a case study using the public data-set provided by a PV station in Australia. Comparisons with common short-term PV power forecasting models are also presented. The results show that under the processing of trend feature extraction and feature selection, the proposed methodology provides a more stable and accurate forecasting effect than other forecasting models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although traditional physical models have been used to analyse groundwater systems, the emergence of novel machine learning models can improve the accuracy of the predictions. Deep learning has been prominent in environmental and climate change problems. In this paper, we present a framework for utilising deep learning models to predict groundwater levels based on nearby streamflow and rainfall data. We address the missing data problem using a Bayesian linear regression model within the deep learning framework. Our deep learning framework utilises models such as long-short term memory (LSTM) networks and convolutional neural networks (CNN) for multi-step ahead time series prediction. We examine the fluctuations in groundwater levels at various boreholes located near Middle Creek in New South Wales, Australia. We use the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) groundwater database and utilise Bayesian linear regression to impute missing data. We investigate the accuracy of the selected models for individual and regional basins and univariate and multivariate strategies. Our results show that the LSTM-based regional model with multivariate strategy using rainfall data provided the best accuracy. • We predict groundwater levels based on stream flow and rainfall data. • Our framework uses Bayesian data imputation and deep learning for multi-step prediction. • We examine the groundwater fluctuations at various boreholes located in Australia. • Results show a fine-tuned regional model with rainfall data yielded the best accuracy. • We find that LSTM models outperformed CNNs using the multivariate approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the development and evaluation of short-term traffic prediction models using unidirectional and bidirectional deep learning long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks. The unidirectional LSTM (Uni-LSTM) model provides high performance through its ability to recognize longer sequences of traffic time series data. In this work, Uni-LSTM is extended to bidirectional LSTM (BiLSTM) networks which train the input data twice through forward and backward directions. The paper presents a comparative evaluation of the two models for short-term speed and traffic flow prediction using a common dataset of field observations collected from multiple freeways in Australia. The results showed BiLSTM performed better for variable prediction horizons for both speed and flow. Stacked and mixed Uni-LSTM and BiLSTM models were also investigated for 15-minute prediction horizons resulting in improved accuracy when using 4-layer BiLSTM networks. The optimized 4-layer BiLSTM model was then calibrated and validated for multiple prediction horizons using data from three different freeways. The validation results showed a high degree of prediction accuracy exceeding 90% for speeds up to 60-minute prediction horizons. For flow, the model achieved accuracies above 90% for 5- and 10-minute prediction horizons and more than 80% accuracy for 15- and 30-minute prediction horizons. These findings extend the set of AI models available for road operators and provide them with confidence in applying robust models that have been tested and evaluated on different freeways in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel data driven framework for detecting topology transitions in a distribution network. The framework analyzes data from phasor measurement units (PMUs) and relies on the fact that changes in network topology results in changes in the structure and admittance of the network. Using voltage and current phasors recorded by PMUs, the proposed method approximates network parameters using an ensemble-based deep learning model and thus, it does not require any knowledge of network parameters and load models. Using the prediction error of the proposed model, a connectivity matrix which shows the status of switches is constructed. In contrast to other methods, this proposed framework does not require a library of voltage and current transients associated with possible network transitions. It can also detect simultaneous switching actions and is robust to noise and load variations. The model yields a lower error detection rate, and its performance is validated using a modified version of the IEEE 33 bus network and a real feeder located in Queensland, Australia, under full and partial observability conditions. The proposed model has also been compared with another data driven method in terms of inference time and error detection rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power grid damage and blackouts are increasing with climate change. Load forecasting methods that integrate climate resilience are therefore essential to facilitate timely and accurate network reconfiguration during periods of extreme stress. Our paper proposes a generalised Wildfire Resilient Load Forecasting Model (WRLFM) to predict electricity load based on operational data of a Distribution Network (DN) in Australia during wildfire seasons in 2015–2020. We demonstrate that load forecasting during wildfire seasons is more challenging than during non-wildfire seasons, motivating an imperative need to improve forecast performance during wildfire seasons. To develop the robust WRLFM, comprehensive comparative analyses were conducted to determine proper Machine Learning (ML) forecast structures and methods for incorporating multiple factors. Bi-directional Gated Recurrent Unit (Bi-GRU) and Vision Transformer (ViT) were selected as they performed the best among all 13 recently trending ML methods. Multi-factors were incorporated to contribute to forecast performance, including input sequence structures, calendar information, flexible correlation-based temperature conditions, and categorical Fire Weather Index (FWI). High-resolution categorical FWI was used to build a forecasting model with climate resilience for the first time, significantly enhancing the average stability of forecast performances by 42%. A sensitivity analysis compared data set patterns and model performances during wildfire and non-wildfire seasons. The improvement rate of load forecasting performance during wildfire seasons was more than two times greater than in non-wildfire seasons. This indicates the significance and effectiveness of applying the WRLFM to improve forecast accuracy under extreme weather risks. Overall, the WRLFM reduces the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of the forecast by 14.37% and 20.86% for Bi-GRU and ViT-based models, respectively, achieving an average forecast MAPE of around 3%. • Novel climate-resilient load forecast model for use during extreme wildfire seasons. • Bi-GRU and ViT outperform 11 recently trending machine learning models. • Categorical FWI with high resolution enhances forecast stability by 42%. • Optimised calendar, temperature and FWI input reduce errors by 17.6%. • Forecast improvement during wildfires is twice that in non-wildfire seasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent technological advances and their applications to agriculture provide leverage for the new paradigm of smart agriculture. Remote sensing applications can help optimise resources, making agriculture more ecological, increasing productivity and helping farmers to anticipate events that could not otherwise be avoided. Considering that losses caused by anomalies such as diseases, weeds and pests account for 20–40 % of overall agricultural productivity, a successful research effort in this area would be a breakthrough for agriculture. In this paper, we propose a methodology with which to discover and classify anomalies in images of crops, taken from a wide range of distances, using different Convolutional Neural Network architectures. This methodology also deals with several difficulties that usually appear in this kind of problems, such as class imbalance, the insufficient and small variety of images, overtraining or lack of models generalisation. We have implemented four convolutional neural network architectures in a high-performance computing environment, and propose a methodology based on data augmentation with the addition of Gaussian noise to the images to solve the above problems. Our approach was tested using two well-established open datasets that are unalike: DeepWeeds, which provides a classification of 8 weed species native to Australia using images that were taken at a distance of 1 m, and Agriculture-Vision, which classifies 6 types of crop anomalies using multispectral satellite imagery. Our methodology attained accuracies of 98 % and 95.3% respectively, improving the state-of-the-art by several points. In order to ease reproducibility and model selection, we have provided a comparison in terms of computational time and other metrics, thus enabling the choice between architectures to be made according to the resources available. The complete code is available in an open repository in order to encourage reproducibility and promote scientific advances in sustainable agriculture. • A convolutional deep learning model was developed for anomaly detection in agricultural images. • High and low-resolution imagery can be used as input for the model. • Data transformation and augmentation are part of our methodology. • Extensive experiments comparing 4 architectures and 2 datasets are shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The peak period of an energy-generating wave is one of the most important parameters that describe the spectral shape of the oceanic wave, as this indicates the duration for which the waves prevail with respect to their maximum extractable energy. In this paper, a half-hourly peak wave energy period (T P) forecast model is constructed using a suite of statistically significant lagged inputs based on the partial auto-correlation function with an extreme learning machine model developed and its predictive utility is benchmarked against deep learning models, i.e., convolutional neural network (CNN/CovNet) and recurrent neural network (RNN) models and other traditional M5tree, Conditional Maximization based Multiple Linear Regression (MLR-ECM) and MLR models. The objective model (ELM) vs. the comparison models (CNN, RNN, M5tree, MLR-ECM, and MLR) were trained and validated independently on the test dataset obtained from coastal zones of eastern Australia that have a high potential for implementation of wave energy generation systems. The outcomes ascertain that the ELM model can generate significantly accurate predictions of the half-hourly peak wave energy period, providing a good level of accuracy relative to deep learning models in selected coastal study zones. The study establishes the practical usefulness of the ELM model as being a noteworthy methodology for the applications in renewable and sustainable energy resource management systems. • A real-time peak wave energy period forecasting model is constructed using ELM model. • The advance ELM is benchmarked against a deep learning and other traditional models. • The advance ELM generates better predictions than deep learning models in this region. • ELM model provides significant energy management implications for ocean waves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future soil moisture (SM) estimation is a practically useful task for eco-hydrologists, agriculturists, and stakeholders in environment health monitoring to generate comprehensive understanding of hydro-physical and soil dynamic system. This paper demonstrates the capability of a hybridised long short-term memory (LSTM) predictive framework to emulate SM under global warming scenarios. The proposed model is developed by integrating Boruta-random forest (BRF) feature selection and capturing significant antecedent memory of SM behaviour were applied to estimate the future SM using Coupled Model Intercomparison Phase-5 (CMIP5) repository. The BRF is adapted to extract pertinent features in hydro-meteorological variables intrinsically related to SM, and therefore, is used to construct a hybridised deep learning (i.e., BRF-LSTM) model. To establish the viability of deep learning model for SM estimation until 2100, five stations closely matched to the global climate model grid are selected in Australia's Murray Darling Basin. The performance skill of BRF-LSTM model is compared against standalone models (i.e., LSTM, SVR, and MARS). The results showed that the hybrid deep learning model (i.e., BRF-LSTM) with a feature selection capability could significantly outperform the standalone models for both warming simulations. The proposed hybrid model also demonstrated superiority in SM estimation with over 95% of all predictive errors lying below 0.02 mm, and low relative root means square error (≈ 1.06% for RCP4.5 and ≈ 1.888% for RCP8.5) to outperform all the benchmark models. This study demonstrates the capability of LSTM algorithm coupled with BRF feature selection to simulate future soil moisture under climate change, and so, can be successfully implemented in hydrology, agriculture, soil use management and environmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately predicting estuaries water quality is essential to support immediate intervention to water quality problem management. Deep learning is used to improve forecasting of water quality parameters in many aquatic systems. However, it is frequently constrained by low data frequency and quality. High-frequency, continuous monitoring using integrated in-situ water quality and environmental sensors can be an input to deep learning models resulting in highly accurate water quality and environmental predictions. This paper proposes a novel approach to improve forecasting of water quality and environmental variables. The results of the real-world data from the Swan Canning Estuary sites show how well the suggested model works. With different sizes of training and testing sets, the model can still predict the increased number of hours in high scores. Eliminating highly correlated variables impact the model's performance, emphasising the usefulness of strongly correlated variables in scarce data scenarios. • This article proposes a framework to enhance water quality variable forecasting. • The framework reframes the time series problem as a supervised learning problem. • The results on the set of data from the estuary show how well the framework works. • The approach is envisaged to support management in detecting water quality issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geological and geophysical interpretation is characterised by large and localised datasets that are extremely expensive to acquire. There are clear advantages in applying deep learning techniques to such datasets, but this requires a large amount of suitable data for effective training. Creation of training data can be time-consuming, but novel countermeasures such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are an enticing alternative with the potential to alleviate this issue by providing synthetic data that is representative of the real data. This paper details an investigation of the potential of GANs for the augmentation of labelled seismic facies from a mass transport complex in training a convolutional neural network (CNN) for facies classification. The study adopts a specific GAN approach, known as the Conditional Style-Based Logo GAN (LoGANv2), because of its capability to generate conditioned output with improved training stability. By using LoGANv2 to synthesise examples that mimic the behaviour of the real data, based on a 3D seismic dataset from the North Carnarvon Basin in Australia, the accuracy of the traditional CNN for facies classification improved from 38% (the benchmark result where no augmentation was applied) to 52%, 61%, 94% and 74% for four trials with different degrees of augmentation. The results show that increasing training size, either through manual annotation (trial 2) or standard manipulations such as image rotation (trial 3 and trial 4), improves the performance of LoGANv2 and hence the CNN classification. The experiments indicate that although standard manipulation can increase the diversity of the training dataset, the balance between diversity and consistency within the datasets is also important, and this should be optimized for LoGANv2 to achieve better performance. In addition, we explored the adaptability of the proposed LoGANv2-CNN approach to unlabelled samples from another survey to demonstrate the robustness and flexibility of the model. • A LoGANv2-assisted CNN model was developed for augmentation and classification of seismic facies. • With LoGANv2 proving its capacity to augment different types of seismic facies with minimal manual labelling, the synthetic facies generated and the real ones are passed down to a CNN for further classification. • The streamlined process demonstrates that, with little manual annotation, the generation of synthetic seismic facies could lead to a better understanding of the underlying geological structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the considerable success of deep learning methods in modelling physical processes, they suffer from a variety of issues such as overfitting and lack of interpretability. In hydrology, conceptual rainfall-runoff models are simple yet fast and effective tools to represent the underlying physical processes through lumped storage components. Although conceptual rainfall-runoff models play a vital role in supporting decision-making in water resources management and urban planning, they have limited flexibility to take data into account for the development of robust region-wide models. The combination of deep learning and conceptual models has the potential to address some of the aforementioned limitations. This paper presents a sub-model hybridization of the GR4J rainfall-runoff model with deep learning architectures such as convolutional neural networks (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) networks. The results show that the hybrid models outperform both the base conceptual model as well as the canonical deep neural network architectures in terms of the Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) score across 223 catchments in Australia. We show that our hybrid model provides a significant improvement in predictive performance, particularly in arid catchments, and generalizing better across catchments. • Hybrid modelling features parsimony of data-driven and conceptual hydrologic models. • We present a deep learning-based hybridization for the GR4J rainfall-runoff model. • We present a hierarchical training approach consisting of gradient-based and evolutionary optimization of the respective models. • The results show that hybrid models outperform the canonical (base) hydrologic and deep learning model. • The addition of surface temperature and antecedent streamflow further improves the predictive performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate and reliable low-voltage load forecasting is critical to optimal operation and control of distribution network and smart grid. However, compared to traditional regional load forecasting at high-voltage level, it faces tough challenges due to the inherent high uncertainty of the low-capacity load and distributed renewable energy integrated in the demand side. This paper proposes a novel hybrid ensemble deep learning (HEDL) approach for deterministic and probabilistic low-voltage load forecasting. The deep belief network (DBN) is applied to low-voltage load point prediction with the strong ability of approximating nonlinear mapping. A series of ensemble learning methods including bagging and boosting variants are introduced to improve the regression ability of DBN. In addition, the differencing transformation technique is utilized to ensure the stationarity of load time series for the application bagging and boosting methods. On the basis of the integrated thought of ensemble learning, a new hybrid ensemble algorithm is developed via integrating multiple separate ensemble methods. Considering the diversity in various ensemble algorithms, an effective K nearest neighbor classification method is utilized to adaptively determine the weights of sub-models. Furthermore, HEDL based probabilistic forecasting is proposed by taking advantage of the inherent resample idea in bagging and boosting. The effectiveness of the HEDL method for both deterministic and probabilistic forecasting has been systematically verified based on realistic load data from East China and Australia, indicating its promising prospective for practical applications in distribution networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video-based human action recognition is currently one of the most active research areas in computer vision. Various research studies indicate that the performance of action recognition is highly dependent on the type of features being extracted and how the actions are represented. Since the release of the Kinect camera, a large number of Kinect-based human action recognition techniques have been proposed in the literature. However, there still does not exist a thorough comparison of these Kinect-based techniques under the grouping of feature types, such as handcrafted versus deep learning features and depth-based versus skeleton-based features. In this paper, we analyze and compare 10 recent Kinect-based algorithms for both cross-subject action recognition and cross-view action recognition using six benchmark datasets. In addition, we have implemented and improved some of these techniques and included their variants in the comparison. Our experiments show that the majority of methods perform better on cross-subject action recognition than cross-view action recognition, that the skeleton-based features are more robust for cross-view recognition than the depth-based features, and that the deep learning features are suitable for large datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local and state governments depend on small area population forecasts to make important decisions concerning the development of local infrastructure and services. Despite their importance, current methods often produce highly inaccurate forecasts. Recent years have witnessed promising developments in time series forecasting using Machine Learning across a wide range of social and economic variables. However, limited work has been undertaken to investigate the potential application of Machine Learning methods in demography, particularly for small area population forecasting. In this paper we describe the development of two Long-Short Term Memory network architectures for small area populations. We employ the Keras Tuner to select layer unit numbers, vary the window width of input data, and apply a double training and validation regime which supports work with short time series and prioritises later sequence values for forecasts. These methods are transferable and can be applied to other data sets. Retrospective small area population forecasts for Australia were created for the periods 2006–16 and 2011–16. Model performance was evaluated against actual data and two benchmark methods (LIN/EXP and CSP-VSG). We also evaluated the impact of constraining small area population forecasts to an independent national forecast. Forecast accuracy was influenced by jump-off year, constraining, area size, and remoteness. The LIN/EXP model was the best performing method for the 2011-based forecasts whilst deep learning methods performed best for the 2006-based forecasts, including significant improvements in the accuracy of 10 year forecasts. However, benchmark methods were consistently more accurate for more remote areas and for those with populations <5000. • A novel deep learning method for small area forecasts is presented. • Forecast accuracy was influenced by jump-off year, constraining, area size, and remoteness. • Deep learning methods performed best for the 5 and 10 year 2006-based forecasts. • The LIN/EXP model was the best performing method for the 5 year 2011-based forecasts. • Benchmark methods were consistently more accurate for more remote areas and for those with populations <5000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the ever-increasing level of bidding freedom bestowed to participants in deregulated electricity markets, bidding strategies have become more diversified and complicated, inevitably giving rise to the growth of market uncertainties. Some researchers have developed tools to predict the bidding behaviors of generation companies (GENCOs) considering uncertainties. However, there still remains a gap in enhancing the performance of probabilistic Bidding Behavior Forecasting (BBF) and understanding the sources of bidding uncertainties in electricity markets. This paper proposes a holistic Bayesian Deep Learning (BDL) framework based on Accurate Variational Inference (AVI) to capture both aleatoric uncertainty and epistemic uncertainty, two important uncertainties in bidding behaviors. The introduced framework also procures higher BBF accuracy and reasonable computation cost compared with existing techniques. Derivatives of GENCOs' bidding uncertainty are ascertained by implementing a new metric to quantify the impact of influence factors. A numerical experiment is conducted using data from National Electricity Market (NEM) in Australia to demonstrate the performance of the proposed framework. • A BDL framework based on AVI is proposed for analyzing bidding uncertainty. • A modified BNN is constructed to perform BBF with higher efficiency. • The epistemic uncertainty and the aleatoric uncertainty in BBF are captured. • The derivatives of bidding uncertainty are ascertained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting electricity demand data is considered an essential task in decisions taking, and establishing new infrastructure in the power generation network. To deliver a high-quality electricity demand prediction, this paper proposes a hybrid combination technique, based on a deep learning model of Convolutional Neural Networks and Echo State Networks, named as CESN. Daily electricity demand data from four sites (Roderick, Rocklea, Hemmant and Carpendale), located in Southeast Queensland, Australia, have been used to develop the proposed hybrid prediction model. The study also analyzes five other machine learning-based models (support vector regression, multilayer perceptron, extreme gradient boosting, deep neural network, and Light Gradient Boosting) to compare and evaluate the outcomes of the proposed deep learning approach. The results obtained in the experimental study showed that the proposed hybrid deep learning model is able to obtain the highest performance compared to other existing models developed for daily electricity demand data forecasting. Based on the statistical approaches utilized in this study, the proposed hybrid approach presents the highest prediction accuracy among the compared models. The obtained results showed that the proposed hybrid deep learning algorithm is an excellent and accurate electricity demand forecasting method, which outperformed the state of the art algorithms that are currently used in this problem. [Display omitted] • A Hybrid deep learning model is proposed for daily electricity demand prediction. • Convolutional Neural Networks and Echo State Networks are integrated into a single forecasting algorithm. • The proposed deep learning-based approach is excellent in electricity demand prediction. • The proposed algorithm has practical use in inter-daily electricity demand prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photovoltaic (PV) power forecasting (PVPF) plays an important role in the scheduling and operation of modern power systems. Considering the highly varying and complex features of PVPF, this paper constitutes a novel hybrid deep learning forecasting method. A similar day selection method based on the levy-flight beetle antennae search algorithm is proposed to select historical days similar to the forecast day from the real-time massive data. The Pearson correlation coefficient method is utilized to select the main meteorological factors while wavelet packet decomposition is used to decompose and reconstruct the original PV power into a series of sub-signals. A deep learning model taking the sub-signals of similar days as network inputs is established with a group of gated recurrent units (GRU), where the hyperparameters of each GRU network are effectively optimized. The forecasting result of each sub-signal is integrated to obtain the final forecasting PV power value. The simulation regarding the 5-min ahead PVPF is carried out based on a real-world dataset from Alice Spring, Australia. The simulation comparisons indicate that the proposed hybrid deep learning method outperforms other competitive PVPF methods in terms of both forecasting accuracy and computational efficiency. • Application of SDS-based GRU model to PV power forecasting. • A similar day selection method is developed based on the Levy-flight BAS algorithm. • Application of WPD to decompose the PV signal to extract the frequency feature. • Levy-flight BAS is used to optimize the hyperparameters of GRU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern power systems are experiencing the challenge of high uncertainty with the increasing penetration of renewable energy resources and the electrification of heating systems. In this paradigm shift, understanding electricity users' demand is of utmost value to the retailers, aggregators, and policymakers. However, behind-the-meter (BTM) equipment and appliances at the household level are unknown to the other stakeholders mainly due to privacy concerns and tight regulations. In this paper, we seek to identify residential consumers based on their BTM equipment, mainly rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems and electric heating, using imported/purchased energy data from utility meters. To solve this problem with an interpretable, fast, secure, and maintainable solution, we propose an integrated method called Interpretable Refined Motifs And binary Classification (IRMAC). The proposed method comprises a novel shape-based pattern extraction technique, called Refined Motif (RM) discovery, and a single-neuron classifier. The first part extracts a sub-pattern from the long time series considering the frequency of occurrences, average dissimilarity, and time dynamics while emphasising specific times with annotated distances. The second part identifies users' types with linear complexity while preserving the transparency of the algorithms. With the real data from Australia and Denmark, the proposed method is tested and verified in identifying PV owners and electrical heating system users. The performance of the IRMAC is studied and compared with various state-of-the-art methods. The proposed method reached an accuracy of 96% in identifying rooftop PV users and 94.4% in identifying electric heating users, which is comparable to the best solution based on deep learning, while the speed of the inference model is a thousand times faster. Last but not least, the proposed method is a transparent algorithm, which can tackle the concerns regarding the agnostic decision-making process when policies prohibit some machine learning methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particulate matter (PM) or particle pollution include the tiny particles of dust and fly ash particles are expelled from coal-burning power plants. Coal combustion is an extremely prevalent source of air pollution, and resulting PM has substantial impacts on human health, especially in industrial zones. This paper aims to design a novel hybrid deep learning framework based on long short-term memory (LSTM) integrated with a two-stage data filtering technique to accurately predict the air quality indices (i.e., PM 2.5 and PM 10) in a chosen study region 'Miles Airport, Queensland,' that meets the needs of the coal seam gas industry in Australia. The data used to construct the novel hybrid two-stage data filtering technique based on LSTM comprising of six meteorological parameters (i.e., wind direction, wind speed, air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, and rainfall) and two environmental factors (i.e., ozone and total suspended particulate). In the first stage, two robust feature selection methods, namely, extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) and the classification and regression tree (CART) approach, were adopted to explore the most significant predictors. Then in the second stage, the best subset regression (BSR) technique is utilized to determine the best subsets input combinations i.e., C1, C2, and C3 based on several particular metrics. The three BSR-based input combinations were employed in the LSTM model to estimate the PM 2.5 and PM 10. Furthermore, to validate the main hybrid framework, two advanced machine learning (ML) methods (i.e., LightGBM and ridge kernel regression (KRR)) and two traditional ML methods (i.e., Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and multilayer perceptron neural network (MLP)) were hybridized with the multi-level data filtering strategy by examining the optimal input combinations. Several statistical metrics, graphical tools, and diagnostic analyses evaluated the hybrid models. The outcomes of the PM 2.5 simulation based on 2375 data samples showed that the LSTM-C3 containing all the selected predictors yielded the most promising accuracy, followed by the LightGBM-C3 and MLP-C3 models. On the other hand, the simulation of PM 10 distribution demonstrated that the LSTM-C3 was superior to other models, followed by the KRR-C3 and LightGBM-C3 models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modelling workflow for BRF-LSTM and BRF-GRU predictive models. [Display omitted] • Deep learning hybrid predictive model (BRF-LSTM) is built for streamflow forecasting. • Climate indices, rainfall and periodicity are factored for accurate predictions. • Adopts feature algorithm (i.e. Boruta) with long short-term memory and gated recurrent unit. • Six gauging sites tested; BRF-LSTM yields > 98% errors in ± 0.015 m, ~1.30% relative error. • The proposed model is useful for hydrological and strategic water resources planning. Long-term forecasting of any hydrologic phenomena is essential for strategic environmental planning, hydrologic and other forms of structural design, agriculture, and water resources management. Climate mode indices, utilising machine learning methods, are frequently considered as predictor variables in order to forecast several different hydrological variables. In this study, a feature selection algorithm based on two different deep learning models, i.e., long short-term memory and a gated recurrent unit, is applied to improve the forecasting capability of streamflow water levels at six gauging stations in the Murray Darling Basin of Australia. This paper therefore aggregates the significant antecedent lag memory of climate mode indices, rainfall, and the monthly factor based on the periodicity as the predictor variables to attain significantly accurate stream water level forecasts. This novel method identifies an improved relationship between the stream water level and climate mode indices through the aggregation of the significant lagged datasets capturing the historical features to predict the future streamflow water level. The boruta feature selection algorithm (BRF) was then applied in a two phase process before and after attaining the significant lagged inputs to screen the optimum predictor variables. The merits of the forecast models were evaluated through different performance evaluation criteria. The results show that the accumulated significant lagged inputs based on climate mode indices, along with the rainfall and periodicity factors are seen to provide improved forecasting of the SWL over the non-BRF deep learning approaches where no prior feature selection was applied. The hybrid LSTM method (i.e., BRF-LSTM model) achieved a unique advantage in terms of SWL forecasting, particularly attaining over 98% of the predictive errors lying within a band of +/-0.015 m with relatively low relative errors (RRMSE ≈1.30% and RMAE ≈ 0.882%), outperforming all of the benchmark models. It is also found that the periodicity factor has a potential influence on the accuracy of the forecast models for the four monitored study stations. This study concludes that the newly developed hybrid deep learning approaches, coupled with the BRF feature selection, provide improved forecasting performance. The hybrid approach developed in this paper can therefore be used to provide a strong provide predictive response algorithm for the hydrological variables that were influenced by the low-frequency variability of the climate model indices in respect to streamflow water level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The LSTM method is proposed to construct the LUBE approach-based prediction interval for wind power forecast. • An innovative fuzzy approach is suggested to adjust the prediction interval coverage probability. • CDOA is applied to achieve the most optimal prediction intervals. This paper proposes a novel deep learning method based on lower-upper-bound-estimation (LUBE) and long short-term memory (LSTM) models to capture the uncertainty effects in the power generation of wind turbines. The LUBE model deploys the prediction interval concept as well as the LSTM approach to make a robust and resilient model. The LSTM approach is applied to construct the optimal prediction intervals with an appropriate upper bound and lower bound with a certain confidence level. In addition, the fuzzy set theory is proposed in the model to let adjust LSTM parameters based on the decision maker's ideas. This approach empowers operators to satisfy both coverage probability and width indicators of prediction intervals to achieve the optimal solution. The collective decision optimization algorithm is introduced to provide more flexibility in tuning the LSTM parameters. The efficiency and quality of the proposed scheme are studied using some datasets gathered from the Australia wind farms. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More timely and accurate air quality forecasting could contribute to better public health protection and air pollution prevention. Particulates are a significant indicator for measuring the degree of air pollution. This paper reports on research to model an early warning tool for coarse particulates when assessing the impact of the 12 satellite-derived and ground-based meteorological pollutants out of 30 pollutants considered using hourly Australian data from January 2018–December 2020. A one-dimensional convolutional neural network (CNN) was integrated with a one-directional fully gated recurrent unit (GRU) to forecast consecutive hours' air quality. The CNN model acts as a spatial feature extractor, whereas the new generation GRU makes it computationally efficient. The resultant hybrid ' CNN-GRU' is then comprehensively benchmarked outperforming an ensemble of six other deep learning models. The proposed model's efficacy is indicated at the four most air polluted Australian postcodes in the testing phase. A detailed error analysis with visual and statistical metrics for air quality forecasting ascertains the proposed model's countermeasure to reduce harm and loss. The practical tool is immensely beneficial and can be widely deployed to the regions of public health concern where air pollution is a significant hazard. [Display omitted] • A novel early warning hybrid PM10 forecasting framework designed for Australia. • 30 satellite and ground-based meteorological pollutants were considered with 7 modeling approaches. • CNN integrated with GRU outperformed the other models. • Early warning AI model show potential in the health, environment sector, and decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new hybrid approach for Global Solar Radiation (GSR) prediction problems, based on deep learning approaches. Predictive models are useful ploys in solar energy industries to optimize the performance of photovoltaic power systems. Specifically, in this work we develop a new 4-phase hybrid CXGBRFR framework, which includes a deep learning Convolutional Neural Network, an Extreme Gradient Boosting with Random Forest Regression, and a Harris Hawks Optimization for initial feature selection. The proposed system has been tested in a problem of daily GSR prediction at six solar farms in Australia. Data from three global climate models (GCM) (CSIRO-BOM ACCESS1-0, MOHC Hadley-GEM2-CC and MRI MRI-CGCM3) have been considered as predictive (input) variables for the proposed approach. The variables from these GCMs contain enough information to obtain an accurate prediction of the GSR at each solar farm. The performance of the proposed approach is compared against different deep and shallows learning approaches: Deep Belief Network, Deep Neural Network, Artificial Neural Network, Extreme Learning Machine and Multivariate Auto-Regressive Spline models. We show that the proposed approach exhibits an excellent performance in GSR prediction, against all alternative approaches in all solar farms considered. [Display omitted] • We develop hybrid deep learning model to predict solar radiation • We optimize the algorithm with Harris Hawks, gradient boosting and random forest • We adopt global climate model and observed predictors as learning model inputs • We build an expert system with relevant knowledge in context of solar application • Our methods benefit solar photovoltaic power monitoring in solar engineering problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a new hybrid deep learning (DL) model, the called CSVR, for Global Solar Radiation (GSR) predictions by integrating Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) with Support Vector Regression (SVR) approach. First, the CNN algorithm is used to extract local patterns as well as common features that occur recurrently in time series data at different intervals. Then, the SVR is subsequently adopted to replace the fully connected CNN layers to predict the daily GSR time series data at six solar farms in Queensland, Australia. To develop the hybrid CSVR model, we adopt the most pertinent meteorological variables from Global Climate Model and Scientific Information for Landowners database. From a pool of Global Climate Models variables and ground-based observations, the optimal features are selected through a metaheuristic Feature Selection algorithm, an Atom Search Optimization method. The hyperparameters of the proposed CSVR are optimized by mean of the HyperOpt method, and the overall performance of the objective algorithm is benchmarked against eight alternative DL methods, and some of the other Machine Learning approaches (LSTM, DBN, RBF, BRF, MARS, WKNNR, GPML and M5TREE) methods. The results obtained shows that the proposed CSVR model can offer several predictive advantages over the alternative DL models, as well as the conventional ML models. Specifically, we note that the CSVR model recorded a root mean square error/mean absolute error ranging between ≈ 2.172–3.305 MJ m2/1.624–2.370 MJ m2 over the six tested solar farms compared to ≈ 2.514–3.879 MJ m2/1.939–2.866 MJ m2 from alternative ML and DL algorithms. Consistent with this predicted error, the correlation between the measured and the predicted GSR , including the Willmott's, Nash-Sutcliffe's coefficient and Legates & McCabe's Index was relatively higher for the proposed CSVR model compared to other DL and Machine Learning methods for all of the study sites. Accordingly, this study advocates the merits of CSVR model to provide a viable alternative to accurately predict GSR for renewable energy exploitation, energy demand or other forecasting-based applications. [Display omitted] • This paper presents a hybrid CSVR algorithm for global solar radiation prediction. • The proposed approach combines Convolutional Neural Network with a Support Vector Machine. • An Atom Search-based feature selection is applied to improve the performance of the system. • Experiments are carried out in data at six solar energy farms in Queensland, Australia. • The results show the efficacy of deep learning CSVR for solar energy prediction problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel CTSGAN deep learning framework is first proposed and applied to model day-ahead electricity price scenarios. • The CTSGAN point forecasting model can eventually be transformed into a probabilistic forecasting model by enhancing the diversity of random input. • The CTSGAN probabilistic forecasting model can directly yield high-quality forecasting intervals with different coverage probabilities as a multi-objective forecasting model. • PSO-based optimal conditions selection method can increase the forecasting accuracy. Electricity prices in spot markets are volatile and can be affected by various factors, such as generation and demand, system contingencies, local weather patterns, bidding strategies of market participants, and uncertain renewable energy outputs. Because of these factors, electricity price forecasting is challenging. This paper proposes a scenario modeling approach to improve forecasting accuracy, conditioning time series generative adversarial networks on external factors. After data pre-processing and condition selection, a conditional TSGAN or CTSGAN is designed to forecast electricity prices. Wasserstein Distance, weights limitation, and RMSProp optimizer are used to ensure that the CTGAN training process is stable. By changing the dimensionality of random noise input, the point forecasting model can be transformed into a probabilistic forecasting model. For electricity price point forecasting, the proposed CTSGAN model has better accuracy and has better generalization ability than the TSGAN and other deep learning methods. For probabilistic forecasting, the proposed CTSGAN model can significantly improve the continuously ranked probability score and Winkler score. The effectiveness and superiority of the proposed CTSGAN forecasting model are verified by case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an automated active fire detection framework using Sentinel-2 imagery. The framework is made up of three basic parts including data collection and preprocessing, deep-learning-based active fire detection, and final product generation modules. The active fire detection module is developed on a specifically designed dual-domain channel-position attention (DCPA)+HRNetV2 model and a dataset with semi-manually annotated active fire samples is constructed over wildfires that commenced on the east coast of Australia and the west coast of the United States in 2019–2020 for the training process. This dataset can be used as a benchmark for other deep-learning-based algorithms to improve active fire detection accuracy. The performance of active fire detection is evaluated regarding the detection accuracy of deep-learning-based models and the processing efficiency of the whole framework. Results indicate that the DCPA and HRNetV2 combination surpasses DeepLabV3 and HRNetV2 models for active fire detection. In addition, the automated framework can deliver active fire detection results of Sentinel-2 inputs with coverage of about 12,000 km2 (including data download) in less than 6 min, where average intersections over union (IoUs) of 70.4% and 71.9% were achieved in tests over Australia and the United States, respectively. Concepts in this framework can be further applied to other remote sensing sensors with data acquisitions in SWIR-NIR-Red ranges and can serve as a powerful tool to deal with large volumes of high-resolution data used in future fire monitoring systems and as a cost-efficient resource in support of governments and fire service agencies that need timely, optimized firefighting plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a deep learning long-short-term memory (LSTM) method is applied to the forecasting of the critical frequency of the ionosphere F2 layer (foF2). Hourly values of foF2 from 10 ionospheric stations in China and Australia (based on availability) from 2006 to 2019 are used for training and verifying. While 2015 and 2019 are exclusive for verifying the forecasting accuracy. The inputs of the LSTM model are sequential data for the previous values, which include local time (LT), day number, solar zenith angle, the sunspot number (SSN), the daily F10.7 solar flux, geomagnetic the Ap and Kp indices, geographic coordinates, neutral winds, and the observed value of foF2 at the previous moment. To evaluate the forecasting ability of the deep learning LSTM model, two different neural network forecasting models: a back-propagation neural network (BPNN) and a genetic algorithm optimized backpropagation neural network (GABP) were established for comparative analysis. The foF2 parameters were forecasted under geomagnetic quiet and geomagnetic disturbed conditions during solar activity maximum (2015) and minimum (2019), respectively. The forecasting results of these models are compared with those of the international reference ionosphere model (IRI2016) and the measurements. The diurnal and seasonal variations of foF2 for the 4 models were compared and analyzed from 8 selected verification stations. The forecasting results reveal that the deep learning LSTM model presents the optimal performance of all models in forecasting the time series of foF2, while the IRI2016 model has the poorest forecasting performance, and the BPNN model and GABP model are between two of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate forecasting of wind power generation plays a key role in improving the operation and management of a power system network and thereby its reliability and security. However, predicting wind power is complex due to the existence of high non-linearity in wind speed that eventually relies on prevailing weather conditions. In this paper, a novel hybrid deep learning model is proposed to improve the prediction accuracy of very short-term wind power generation for the Bodangora wind farm located in New South Wales, Australia. The hybrid model consists of convolutional layers, gated recurrent unit (GRU) layers and a fully connected neural network. The convolutional layers have the ability to automatically learn complex features from raw data while the GRU layers are capable of directly learning multiple parallel sequences of input data. The data sets of 5-min intervals from the wind farm are used in case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model against other advanced existing models, including long short-term memory, GRU, autoregressive integrated moving average and support vector machine, which are tuned to optimise outcome. To further evaluate the efficacy of the proposed model, another data set taken from the Capital wind farm in Australia is used. It is observed that the hybrid deep learning model exhibits superior performance in both the data sets over other forecasting models to improve the accuracy of wind power forecasting, numerically for the Bodangora wind farm, up to 1.59 per cent in mean absolute error, 3.73 per cent in root mean square error and 8.13 per cent in mean absolute percentage error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate measurements of the structural characteristics of trees such as height, diameter, sweep and taper are an important part of forest inventories in managed forests and commercial plantations. Both terrestrial and aerial LiDAR are currently employed to produce pointcloud data from which inventory metrics can be determined. Terrestrial/ground-based scanning typically provides pointclouds resolutions of many thousands of points per m 2 from which tree stems can be observed and inventory measurements made directly, whereas typical resolutions from aerial scanning (tens of points per m 2 ) require inventory metrics to be regressed from LiDAR variables using inventory reference data collected from the ground. Recent developments in miniaturised LiDAR sensors are enabling aerial capture of pointclouds from low-flying aircraft at high-resolutions (hundreds of points per m 2 ) from which tree stem information starts to become directly visible, enabling the possibility for plot-scale inventories that do not require access to the ground. In this paper, we develop new approaches to automated tree detection, segmentation and stem reconstruction using algorithms based on deep supervised machine learning which are designed for use with aerially acquired high-resolution LiDAR pointclouds. Our approach is able to isolate individual trees, determine tree stem points and further build a segmented model of the main tree stem that encompasses tree height, diameter, taper, and sweep. Through the use of deep learning models, our approach is able to adapt to variations in pointcloud densities and partial occlusions that are particularly prevalent when data is captured from the air. We present results of our algorithms using high-resolution LiDAR pointclouds captured from a helicopter over two Radiata pine forests in NSW, Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The paper introduces a deep learning-based approach for real-time detection and insights generation about one of the most prevalent chronic conditions in Australia - Pollen allergy. The popular social media platform is used for data collection as cost-effective and unobtrusive alternative for public health monitoring to complement the traditional survey-based approaches.Methods: The data was extracted from Twitter based on pre-defined keywords (i.e. 'hayfever' OR 'hay fever') throughout the period of 6 months, covering the high pollen season in Australia. The following deep learning architectures were adopted in the experiments: CNN, RNN, LSTM and GRU. Both default (GloVe) and domain-specific (HF) word embeddings were used in training the classifiers. Standard evaluation metrics (i.e. Accuracy, Precision and Recall) were calculated for the results validation. Finally, visual correlation with weather variables was performed.Results: The neural networks-based approach was able to correctly identify the implicit mentions of the symptoms and treatments, even unseen previously (accuracy up to 87.9% for GRU with GloVe embeddings of 300 dimensions).Conclusions: The system addresses the shortcomings of the conventional machine learning techniques with manual feature-engineering that prove limiting when exposed to a wide range of non-standard expressions relating to medical concepts. The case-study presented demonstrates an application of 'black-box' approach to the real-world problem, along with its internal workings demonstration towards more transparent, interpretable and reproducible decision-making in health informatics domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar energy predictive models designed to emulate the long-term (e.g., monthly) global solar radiation (GSR) trained with satellite-derived predictors can be employed as decision tenets in the exploration, installation and management of solar energy production systems in remote and inaccessible solar-powered sites. In spite of a plethora of models designed for GSR prediction, deep learning, representing a state-of-the-art intelligent tool, remains an attractive approach for renewable energy exploration, monitoring and forecasting. In this paper, algorithms based on deep belief networks and deep neural networks are designed to predict long-term GSR. Deep learning algorithms trained with publicly-accessible Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite data are tested in Australia's solar cities to predict the monthly GSR: single hidden layer and ensemble models. The monthly-scale MODIS-derived predictors (2003–2018) are adopted, with 15 diverse feature selection approaches including a Gaussian Emulation Machine for sensitivity analysis used to select optimal MODIS-predictor variables to simulate GSR against ground-truth values. Several statistical score metrics are adopted to comprehensively verify surface GSR simulations to ascertain the practicality of deep belief and deep neural networks. In the testing phase, deep learning models generate significantly lower absolute percentage bias (≤3%) and high Kling–Gupta efficiency (≥97.5%) values compared to the single hidden layer and ensemble model. This study ascertains that the optimal MODIS input variables employed in GSR prediction for solar energy applications can be relatively different for diverse sites, advocating a need for feature selection prior to the modelling of GSR. The proposed deep learning approach can be adopted to identify solar energy potential proactively in locations where it is impossible to install an environmental monitoring data acquisition instrument. Hence, MODIS and other related satellite-derived predictors can be incorporated for solar energy prediction as a strategy for long-term renewable energy exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]