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Early assessment of the energy performance of buildings (EPB) is focused in this study. This task is carried out by predicting the cooling load (CL) in a residential building. To this end, due to the drawbacks of neural computing approaches (e.g., local minima), a novel metaheuristic technique, namely teaching–learning-based optimization (TLBO) is employed to modify a multi-layer perceptron neural network (MLPNN). The complexity of the proposed model is also optimized by a trial and error process. Evaluating the results revealed a high efficiency for this scheme. In this sense, the prediction error of the MLPNN was reduced by around 20%, and the correlation between the measured and forecasted CLs rose from 0.8875 to 0.9207. It was also deduced that the TLBO outperforms two benchmark optimizers of cuckoo optimization algorithm (COA) and league championship algorithm (LCA) in terms of both modeling accuracy and network complexity. Moreover, the TLBO-MLP emerged as the most time-effective hybrid as it required considerably lower computation time than COA-MLP and LCA-MLP. Regarding these advantages, the proposed model can be promisingly used for early assessment of EPB in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have demonstrated the high efficiency of metaheuristic algorithms for various optimization engineering problems. The main focus of the present study is to apply a novel notion of stochastic search methods, namely evaporation rate-based water cycle algorithm (ER-WCA) to the problem of soil shear strength (SSS) prediction. The ER-WCA, as the name indicates, is a modified version of the water cycle algorithm that is used to computationally modify an artificial neural network (ANN) for the mentioned purpose. The sensitivity analysis showed that the most proper values for the number of rivers + sea and the population size are 5 and 300, respectively. The performance of the ER-WCA–ANN hybrid is compared to an ANN typically trained by the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed metaheuristic technique. The findings showed that incorporation of the ER-WCA results in reducing the root-mean-square error by 5.87% and 4.92% in the training and testing phases, respectively. Meanwhile, the coefficient of determination rose from 84.27 to 86.11% and from 78.80 to 80.83% in these phases. It indicates that the weights and biases suggested by the ER-WCA can construct a considerably more reliable ANN. Therefore, the introduced method is recommended for practical uses in the early prediction of the SSS in civil engineering projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strong ground motions usually trigger lots of slope failures in the affected area. In this work, we analyse the occurrence likelihood of earthquake-triggered landslide by employing the ensembles of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS) with four well-known metaheuristics techniques, namely particle swarm optimization (PSO), genetic algorithm (GA), ant colony optimization (ACO), and differential evolution (DE) algorithms. Twelve landslide conditioning factors namely, elevation, slope degree, lithology, peak ground acceleration (PGA), stream power index (SPI), topographic wetness index (TWI), distance to road, distance to river, distance to fault, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), slope aspect, and plan curvature are considered within the geographic information system (GIS) to produce the required spatial database. In this paper, frequency ratio (FR) model is used to evaluate the spatial interaction between the landslides and conditioning factors. Meantime, among a total of 458 marked earthquake-induced landslides, 366 (80%) are specified to the learning process, and the remaining 92 (20%) landslides are used to evaluate the accuracy of applied models. The landslide susceptibility maps are generated in the GIS environment. Three accuracy criteria of mean square error (MSE), root mean square error (RMSE), and area under the receiving operating characteristic curve (AUROC) are used to develop a ranking system for comparing the integrity of the designed models. The total ranking scores (TRSs) of 15, 8, 10, and 18, respectively, obtained for PSO-ANFIS, GA-ANFIS, ACO-ANFIS, and DE-ANFIS revealed the superiority of the DE algorithm compared to other metaheuristics techniques. Also, the DE-ANFIS emerged as the fastest ensemble, due to the highest convergence speed obtained for this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slump is a workability-related characteristic of concrete mixture. This paper investigates the efficiency of a novel optimizer, namely ant lion optimization (ALO), for fine-tuning of a neural network (NN) in the field of concrete slump prediction. Two well-known optimization techniques, biogeography-based optimization (BBO) and grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA), are also considered as benchmark models to be compared with ALO. Considering seven slump effective factors, namely cement, slag, water, fly ash, superplasticizer (SP), fine aggregate (FA), and coarse aggregate (CA), the mentioned algorithms are synthesized with a neural network to determine the best-fitted neural parameters. The most appropriate complexity of each ensemble is also found by a population-based sensitivity analysis. The findings revealed that the proposed ALO-NN model acquires a good approximation of concrete slump, regarding the calculated root mean square error (RMSE = 3.7788) and mean absolute error (MAE = 3.0286). It also outperformed both BBO-NN (RMSE = 4.1859 and MAE = 3.3465) and GOA-NN (RMSE = 4.9553 and MAE = 3.8576) ensembles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regular optimization techniques have been widely used in landslide-related problems. This paper outlines two novel optimizations of artificial neural network (ANN) using grey wolf optimization (GWO) and biogeography-based optimization (BBO) metaheuristic algorithms in the Ardabil province, Iran. To this end, these algorithms are synthesized with a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network for optimizing its computational parameters. The used spatial database consists of fourteen landslide conditioning factors, namely elevation, slope aspect, land use, plan curvature, profile curvature, soil type, distance to river, distance to road, distance to fault, rainfall, slope degree, stream power index (SPI), topographic wetness index (TWI) and lithology. 70% of the identified landslides are randomly selected to train the proposed models and the remaining 30% is used to evaluate the accuracy of them. Also, the frequency ratio theory is used to analyze the spatial interaction between the landslide and conditioning factors. Obtained values of area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, as well as mean square error and mean absolute error showed that both GWO and BBO hybrid algorithms could efficiently improve the learning capability of the MLP. Besides, the BBO-based ensemble surpasses other implemented models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current study aimed to combine the multi-layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network technique with five metaheuristic computational algorithms, namely invasive weed optimization (IWO-MLP), dragonfly algorithm (DA-MLP), evolution strategy (ES-MLP), genetic algorithm (GA-MLP), and imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA-MLP) for estimating the monthly natural gas consumption (NGC). For the case of this study, the NGC data was collected from the United States (U.S.) was chosen. To achieve this, a dataset composed of eight independent factors, namely, dry gas production, NGPL production, gross withdrawals, supplemental gaseous fuels, net storage withdrawals, marketed production, net imports, and balancing items, along with a dependent variable of natural gas consumption is provided. Out of 39 samples, a 3-fold ratio is taken to select the datasets of training and testing randomly. During the calculation phase, and through a trial and error procedure, the optimal parameters of the MLP, IWO-MLP, DA-MLP, ES-MLP, GA-MLP, ICA-MLP networks are taken into consideration. To assess the reliability of the proposed technique with the real collected data, three well-known statistical criteria, including mean square error (MSE) and root mean square error (RMSE) as well as coefficient of determination (R ²), are introduced. These indices help to measure the level of accuracy of the used models. It is found that the IWO can be a better predictive network comparing to other hybridized techniques reducing the error performance of the MLP method. The predicted results reveal that hybridizing optimization algorithms could improve the prediction accuracy and helps the MLP to perform more efficiently. The recorded in testing MSE for the IWO-MLP, DA-MLP, ES-MLP, GA-MLP, ICA-MLP prediction techniques (i.e., used for U.S. natural gas consumption estimation) were found 0.000013, 0.002358, 0.024744, 0.013244, and 0.048572, respectively. In the sense of U.S. natural gas consumption prediction, the training R 2 value to 0.9999, 0.9996, 0.9971, 0.9996, and 1.0000 and testing R 2 value of 0.9999, 0.9995, 0.9956, 0.9984, and 0.8115 show that the outputs of the ensemble models are more correlated with the real data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study pursues optima modification of heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems embedded in residential buildings through predicting heating load (HL) and cooling load (CL). This purpose is carried out by employing four wise metaheuristic algorithms, namely wind-driven optimization (WDO), whale optimization algorithm (WOA), spotted hyena optimization (SHO), and salp swarm algorithm (SSA) synthesized with a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural work in order to overcome the computational shortcomings of this model. The used dataset consists of overall height, glazing area, orientation, relative compactness, wall area, glazing area distribution, roof area, and surface area as independent factors, and the HL and CL as target factors. The results indicated a high capability of all four metaheuristic ensembles for understanding the non-linear relationship between the mentioned factors. Meanwhile, a comparison between the used models revealed that SSA-MLP (Error HL = 1.9178 and Error CL = 2.1830) is the most accurate model, followed by WDO-MLP (Error HL = 1.9863 and Error CL = 2.2424), WOA-MLP (Error HL = 2.1921 and Error CL = 2.5390), and SHO-MLP (Error HL = 3.1092 and Error CL = 4.5930). Regarding the satisfying accuracy of the SSA-based ensemble, it can be a reliable tool for estimating the HL and CL for future smart city planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• EHO, SFLA, SSA, and WDO are Hybridized with MLP. • SSA-MLP presents the most efficient prediction. • Computational weights and biases of the MLP and proposed hybrid algorithms are optimized. Due to the vital significance of precise determination of soil shear strength (SSS) in many civil engineering projects, this study is dedicated to proposing novel intelligent models for estimating this parameter. To this end, elephant herding optimization (EHO), shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA), salp swarm algorithm (SSA), and wind-driven optimization (WDO) are synthesized with artificial neural network (ANN) to create neural ensembles. The results indicated the efficiency of metaheuristic science for dealing with the non-linear analysis of the SSS and influential soil parameters. Also, a comparison between the models revealed that the SSA-MLP (Error = 0.0386 and Correlation = 0.8219) presents the most efficient prediction, followed by WDO-MLP (Error = 0.0403 and Correlation = 0.8025), SFLA-MLP (Error = 0.0408 and Correlation = 0.7559), and EHO-MLP (Error = 0.0436 and Correlation = 0.7195). Therefore, the proposed SSA-MLP can function as a reliable substitute for traditional approaches in prediction of the SSS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]