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• A novel multi-objective scheduling model is developed for the emergency rescue planning problem. • The proposed model minimizes the fire extinguishing time, delay time, and number of fire rescue vehicles. • The factor of fire spreading speed is firstly considered in our optimization model. • A revised multi-objective discrete gravitational search slgorithm is designed to produce Pareto solutions. • An empirical case study in Heilongjiang Province, China, is applied. The implementation of emergency scheduling of priority-based rescue vehicles for extinguishing forest fires is a complex optimization problem facing with many challenges and difficulties to optimize the operational costs and to improve the efficiency to make robust decisions. The main challenges are to minimize the number of fire engines while minimizing firefighting time and firefighting delay time, simultaneously. The main difficulties to make these decisions are to consider the severity of each fire point with regards to the limited resources of vehicles. Hence, this paper motivates to develop a new multi-objective scheduling model for extinguishing the fire of forests considering rescue priority with the limited rescue resources. To make an efficient and robust solution for the proposed problem, another novelty is to propose a hybrid optimization algorithm which is a modified discrete gravitational search algorithm. To confirm the applicability of the proposed problem, an actual forest fire emergency scheduling in Heilongjiang Province, China, is simulated. The proposed hybrid optimization algorithm is tested to check the feasibility the Pareto solutions and it is compared with a set of well-known and recent algorithms to show its efficiency. Finally, after a comprehensive discussion, the results prove that this work provides an accurate and effective tool for performing the emergency scheduling for extinguishing the forest fire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firefly algorithm (FA) is an effective optimization technique based on swarm intelligence, which has been successfully applied to various practical engineering problems. In this paper, a new dynamic FA (called NDFA) is proposed for demand estimation of water resources in Nanchang city of China. First, a dynamic parameter strategy is used to avoid manually adjusting the step factor. Second, three estimation models in different forms (linear, exponential and hybrid) are developed in terms of the historical water use and local economic structure. Third, normalization method is utilized to eliminate the influences of different units of data. In the experiments, water use in Nanchang city from 2003 to 2015 is considered as a case study. The data from 2003 to 2012 are used for finding the optimal weights of the models, and the rest of data (2013–2015) are applied to test the models. Computational results show that all five FA variants can achieve promising solutions. The proposed NDFA obtains better performance than four other FA variants, and its prediction accuracy is up to 97.91%. Finally, the water demand in Nanchang city from 2017 to 2020 is predicted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denoeux proposed an operator called the cautious conjunctive rule (CCR) to combine non-dogmatic belief functions (i.e., the frame is considered a focal element) from reliable dependent sources, which can occur in practice. However, in cases such as uncertain multiple attribute and group decision analyses, belief functions may denote data that vary in importance. This paper extends CCR as a weighted CCR (WCCR) to combine belief functions in consideration of their relative weights in such situations. Properties of WCCR are analyzed, proven, and demonstrated using numerical examples. In particular, the consideration of relative weights enables WCCR to combine dogmatic belief functions. The normalized WCCR is further constructed and used to assess the trustworthiness of a hospital information system employed in many hospitals in Anhui Province, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Construct the green degree evaluation system of equipment manufacturing industry. • Verify the applicability of the particle swarm optimization algorithm method. • Evaluated the green degree of China's equipment manufacturing industry. • Proposing to improve the green degree of China's equipment manufacturing industry. The paper constructs the green degree evaluation system of equipment manufacturing industry, and then the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to measure the green degree of China's equipment manufacturing industry. The results show that the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is a better method to evaluate the green degree of China's equipment manufacturing industry. The paper measure the green degree of China's equipment manufacturing industry is 0.51, which is at a low level. So it is need to adopt policies to promote green degree to achieve sustainable development goals. In view of this, the paper proposes policy recommendations for the green degree of China's equipment manufacturing industry from the perspectives of improving relevant policies, technological upgrading and environmental protection input, applying legal policy systems, and increasing financial support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Based on GIS technology, eco-suitability evaluation method integrating economic, social and ecological factors is employed to optimize the locations of the sewage treatment plants and outfalls in this paper. The ecological indices considering eco-sensitivity areas as key elements of the integrated evaluation system are allotted to the water subsystem, riparian zone subsystem, and land subsystem. A novel integrated eco-suitability evaluation index system encompassing ten criteria and fifteen indices is established to generate the distributed eco-suitability map of the concerned areas and determine the possible locations of sewage treatment plants and sewage outfalls according to the eco-suitability levels. With the case study of Nansha District in Guangzhou City, China, 212km2 areas of land are found to be suitable for locating the sewage treatment plants, 87km2 areas of water suitable for sewage release, and 6km2 area of riparian zone unsuitable for sewage outfalls. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• A novel composite forecasting framework is successfully developed. • The new-information based buffer operator is employed to process raw data with stochastic disturbances. • The optimized nonlinear grey Bernoulli model is put forward by designing the novel initial condition. • The proposed model with buffer operator strikingly outperforms any of other benchmarks. To accurately predict the time series having limited data with stochastic disturbances and nonlinearity, this paper proposed a composite forecasting model by adaptive data preprocessing and optimized nonlinear grey Bernoulli model. Specifically, improvements in the proposed model lie in the following aspects: firstly, the new-information-based buffer operator is utilized to eliminate stochastic disturbance effects and thereby enhance the smoothness of the system series, which can effectively extract the potential patterns of recent development. Secondly, based on the preprocessed data, the nonlinear grey Bernoulli model provided with the newly-designed initial condition that abides by the principle of new information priority without data lapses enables the forecasting precision and applicability enhancement. Thirdly, due to the nonlinear relationships between the prediction errors and the parameters introduced by the above optimization paths, the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm is employed to ascertain the optimal parameters simultaneously, whose efficacy and robustness have been validated by experimental comparison and sensitivity analysis. On the foundation of the above functional improvements, the novel composite forecasting framework successfully overcomes the limitations of conventional grey models to obtain more accurate and robust forecasts, which are substantiated by the applications for predicting the sales of new energy vehicles in China and Norway. Experimental results and discussions demonstrate that the new-information-based buffer operator can be regarded as an excellent alternative tool for data preprocessing. Besides, the grey models with buffered preprocessing can deliver much more accurate forecasts than their corresponding versions without buffered preprocessing. Furthermore, the proposed model with buffered preprocessing outperforms any of the other competitors and can be considered as the most promising technique for prognosticating NEVs sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]