Software defect prediction framework based on hybrid metaheuristic optimization methods

A software defect is an error, failure, or fault in a software that produces an incorrect or unexpected result. Software defects are expensive in quality and cost. The accurate prediction of defect‐prone software modules certainly assist testing effort, reduce costs and improve the quality of software. The classification algorithm is a popular machine learning approach for software defect prediction. Unfortunately, software defect prediction remains a largely unsolved problem. As the first problem, the comparison and benchmarking results of the defect prediction using machine learning classifiers indicate that, the poor accuracy level is dominant and no particular classifiers perform best for all the datasets. There are two main problems that affect classification performance in software defect prediction: noisy attributes and imbalanced class distribution of datasets, and difficulty of selecting optimal parameters of the classifiers. In this study, a software defect prediction framework that combines metaheuristic optimization methods for feature selection and parameter optimization, with meta learning methods for solving imbalanced class problem on datasets, which aims to improve the accuracy of classification models has been proposed. The proposed framework and models that are are considered to be the specific research contributions of this thesis are: 1) a comparison framework of classification models for software defect prediction known as CF-SDP, 2) a hybrid genetic algorithm based feature selection and bagging technique for software defect prediction known as GAFS+B, 3) a hybrid particle swarm optimization based feature selection and bagging technique for software defect prediction known as PSOFS+B, and 4) a hybrid genetic algorithm based neural network parameter optimization and bagging technique for software defect prediction, known as NN-GAPO+B. For the purpose of this study, ten classification algorithms have been selected. The selection aims at achieving a balance between established classification algorithms used in software defect prediction. The proposed framework and methods are evaluated using the state-of-the-art datasets from the NASA metric data repository. The results indicated that the proposed methods (GAFS+B, PSOFS+B and NN-GAPO+B) makes an impressive improvement in the performance of software defect prediction. GAFS+B and PSOFS+B significantly affected on the performance of the class imbalance suffered classifiers, such as C4.5 and CART. GAFS+B and PSOFS+B also outperformed the existing software defect prediction frameworks in most datasets. Based on the conducted experiments, logistic regression performs best in most of the NASA MDP datasets, without or with feature selection method. The proposed methods also generated the selected relevant features in software defect prediction. The top ten most relevant features in software defect prediction include branch count metrics, decision density, halstead level metric of a module, number of operands contained in a module, maintenance severity, number of blank LOC, halstead volume, number of unique operands contained in a module, total number of LOC and design density

Contextual normalization applied to aircraft gas turbine engine diagnosis

Diagnosing faults in aircraft gas turbine engines is a complex problem. It involves several tasks, including rapid and accurate interpretation of patterns in engine sensor data. We have investigated contextual normalization for the development of a software tool to help engine repair technicians with interpretation of sensor data. Contextual normalization is a new strategy for employing machine learning. It handles variation in data that is due to contextual factors, rather than the health of the engine. It does this by normalizing the data in a context-sensitive manner. This learning strategy was developed and tested using 242 observations of an aircraft gas turbine engine in a test cell, where each observation consists of roughly 12,000 numbers, gathered over a 12 second interval. There were eight classes of observations: seven deliberately implanted classes of faults and a healthy class. We compared two approaches to implementing our learning strategy: linear regression and instance-based learning. We have three main results. (1) For the given problem, instance-based learning works better than linear regression. (2) For this problem, contextual normalization works better than other common forms of normalization. (3) The algorithms described here can be the basis for a useful software tool for assisting technicians with the interpretation of sensor data

Data-driven Soft Sensors in the Process Industry

In the last two decades Soft Sensors established themselves as a valuable alternative to the traditional means for the acquisition of critical process variables, process monitoring and other tasks which are related to process control. This paper discusses characteristics of the process industry data which are critical for the development of data-driven Soft Sensors. These characteristics are common to a large number of process industry fields, like the chemical industry, bioprocess industry, steel industry, etc. The focus of this work is put on the data-driven Soft Sensors because of their growing popularity, already demonstrated usefulness and huge, though yet not completely realised, potential. A comprehensive selection of case studies covering the three most important Soft Sensor application fields, a general introduction to the most popular Soft Sensor modelling techniques as well as a discussion of some open issues in the Soft Sensor development and maintenance and their possible solutions are the main contributions of this work

Methods of Technical Prognostics Applicable to Embedded Systems

Hlavní cílem dizertace je poskytnutí uceleného pohledu na problematiku technické prognostiky, která nachází uplatnění v tzv. prediktivní údržbě založené na trvalém monitorování zařízení a odhadu úrovně degradace systému či jeho zbývající životnosti a to zejména v oblasti komplexních zařízení a strojů. V současnosti je technická diagnostika poměrně dobře zmapovaná a reálně nasazená na rozdíl od technické prognostiky, která je stále rozvíjejícím se oborem, který ovšem postrádá větší množství reálných aplikaci a navíc ne všechny metody jsou dostatečně přesné a aplikovatelné pro embedded systémy. Dizertační práce přináší přehled základních metod použitelných pro účely predikce zbývající užitné životnosti, jsou zde popsány metriky pomocí, kterých je možné jednotlivé přístupy porovnávat ať už z pohledu přesnosti, ale také i z pohledu výpočetní náročnosti. Jedno z dizertačních jader tvoří doporučení a postup pro výběr vhodné prognostické metody s ohledem na prognostická kritéria. Dalším dizertačním jádrem je představení tzv. částicového filtrovaní (particle filtering) vhodné pro model-based prognostiku s ověřením jejich implementace a porovnáním. Hlavní dizertační jádro reprezentuje případovou studii pro velmi aktuální téma prognostiky Li-Ion baterii s ohledem na trvalé monitorování. Případová studie demonstruje proces prognostiky založené na modelu a srovnává možné přístupy jednak pro odhad doby před vybitím baterie, ale také sleduje možné vlivy na degradaci baterie. Součástí práce je základní ověření modelu Li-Ion baterie a návrh prognostického procesu.The main aim of the thesis is to provide a comprehensive overview of technical prognosis, which is applied in the condition based maintenance, based on continuous device monitoring and remaining useful life estimation, especially in the field of complex equipment and machinery. Nowadays technical prognosis is still evolving discipline with limited number of real applications and is not so well developed as technical diagnostics, which is fairly well mapped and deployed in real systems. Thesis provides an overview of basic methods applicable for prediction of remaining useful life, metrics, which can help to compare the different approaches both in terms of accuracy and in terms of computational/deployment cost. One of the research cores consists of recommendations and guide for selecting the appropriate forecasting method with regard to the prognostic criteria. Second thesis research core provides description and applicability of particle filtering framework suitable for model-based forecasting. Verification of their implementation and comparison is provided. The main research topic of the thesis provides a case study for a very actual Li-Ion battery health monitoring and prognostics with respect to continuous monitoring. The case study demonstrates the prognostic process based on the model and compares the possible approaches for estimating both the runtime and capacity fade. Proposed methodology is verified on real measured data.

Application of Computational Intelligence Techniques to Process Industry Problems

In the last two decades there has been a large progress in the computational intelligence research field. The fruits of the effort spent on the research in the discussed field are powerful techniques for pattern recognition, data mining, data modelling, etc. These techniques achieve high performance on traditional data sets like the UCI machine learning database. Unfortunately, this kind of data sources usually represent clean data without any problems like data outliers, missing values, feature co-linearity, etc. common to real-life industrial data. The presence of faulty data samples can have very harmful effects on the models, for example if presented during the training of the models, it can either cause sub-optimal performance of the trained model or in the worst case destroy the so far learnt knowledge of the model. For these reasons the application of present modelling techniques to industrial problems has developed into a research field on its own. Based on the discussion of the properties and issues of the data and the state-of-the-art modelling techniques in the process industry, in this paper a novel unified approach to the development of predictive models in the process industry is presented