Utilizing advanced modelling approaches for forecasting air travel demand: a case study of Australia’s domestic low cost carriers

One of the most pervasive trends in the global airline industry over the past few three decades has been the rapid development of low cost carriers (LCCs). Australia has not been immune to this trend. Following deregulation of Australia’s domestic air travel market in the 1990s, a number of LCCs have entered the market, and these carriers have now captured around 31 per cent of the market. Australia’s LCCs require reliable and accurate passenger demand forecasts as part of their fleet, network, and commercial planning and for scaling investments in fleet and their associated infrastructure. Historically, the multiple linear regression (MLR) approach has been the most popular and recommended method for forecasting airline passenger demand. In more recent times, however, new advanced artificial intelligence-based forecasting approaches – artificial neural networks (ANNs), genetic algorithm (GA), and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) - have been applied in a broad range of disciplines. In light of the critical importance of passenger demand forecasts for airline management, as well as the recent developments in artificial intelligence-based forecasting methods, the key aim of this thesis was to specify and empirically examine three artificial intelligence-based approaches (ANNs, GA and ANFIS) as well as the MLR approach, in order to identify the optimum model for forecasting Australia’s domestic LCCs demand. This is the first time that such models – enplaned passengers (PAX) and revenue passenger kilometres performed (RPKs) – have been proposed and tested for forecasting Australia’s domestic LCCs demand. The results show that of the four modeling approaches used in this study that the new, and novel, ANFIS approach provides the most accurate, reliable, and highest predictive capability for forecasting Australia’s LCCs demand. A second aim of the thesis was to explore the principal determinants of Australia’s domestic LCCs demand in order to achieve a greater understanding of the factors which influence air travel demand. The results show that the primary determinants of Australia’s domestic LCCs demand are real best discount airfare, population, real GDP, real GDP per capita, unemployment, world jet fuel prices, real interest rates, and tourism attractiveness. Interestingly three determinants, unemployment, tourism attractiveness, and real interest rates, which have not been empirically examined in any previously reported study of Australia’s domestic LCCs demand, proved to be important predictor variables of Australia’s domestic LCCs demand. The thesis also found that Australia’s LCCs have increasingly embraced a hybrid business model over the past decade. This strategy is similar to LCCs based in other parts of the world. The core outcome of this research, the fact that modelling based on artificial intelligence approaches is far more effective than the traditional models prescribed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), means that future work is essential to validate this. From an academic perspective, the modelling presented in this study offers considerable promise for future air travel demand forecasting. The results of this thesis provide new insights into LCCs passenger demand forecasting methods and can assist LCCs executives, airports, aviation consultants, and government agencies with a variety of future planning considerations

Pervasive Data Analytics for Sustainable Energy Systems

With an ever growing population, global energy demand is predicted to keep increasing. Furthermore, the integration of renewable energy sources into the electricity grid (to reduce carbon emission and humanity's dependency on fossil fuels), complicates efforts to balance supply and demand, since their generation is intermittent and unpredictable. Traditionally, it has always been the supply side that has adapted to follow energy demand, however, in order to have a sustainable energy system for the future, the demand side will have to be better managed to match the available energy supply. In the first part of this thesis, we focus on understanding customers' energy consumption behavior (demand analytics). While previously, information about customer's energy consumption could be obtained only with coarse granularity (e.g., monthly or bimonthly), nowadays, using advanced metering infrastructure (or smart meters), utility companies are able to retrieve it in near real-time. By leveraging smart meter data, we then develop a versatile customer segmentation framework, track cluster changes over time, and identify key characteristics that define a cluster. Additionally, although household-level consumption is hard to predict, it can be used to improve aggregate-level forecasting by first segmenting the households into several clusters, forecasting the energy consumption of each cluster, and then aggregating those forecasts. The improvements provided by this strategy depend not only on the number of clusters, but also on the size of the customer base. Furthermore, we develop an approach to model the uncertainty of future demand. In contrast to previous work that used computationally expensive methods, such as simulation, bootstrapping, or ensemble, we construct prediction intervals directly using the time-varying conditional mean and variance of future demand. While analytics on customer energy data are indeed essential to understanding customer behavior, they could also lead to breaches of privacy, with all the attendant risks. The first part of this thesis closes by exploring symbolic representations of smart meter data which still allow learning algorithms to be performed on top of them, thus providing a trade-off between accurate analytics and the protection of customer privacy. In the second part of this thesis, we focus on mechanisms for incentivizing changes in customers' energy usage in order to maintain (electricity) grid stability, i.e., Demand Response (DR). We complement previous work in this area (which typically targeted large, industrial customers) by studying the application of DR to residential customers. We first study the influence of DR baselines, i.e., estimates of what customers would have consumed in the absence of a DR event. While the literature to date has focused on baseline accuracy and bias, we go beyond these concepts by explaining how a baseline affects customer participation in a DR event, and how it affects both the customer and company profit. We then discuss a strategy for matching the demand side with the supply side by using a multiunit auction performed by intelligent agents on behalf of customers. The thesis closes by eliciting behavioral incentives from the crowd of customers for promoting and maintaining customer engagement in DR programs

Cognitive virtual ad hoc mobile cloud-based networking architecture

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University LondonThis thesis proposed cognitive techniques and intelligent algorithms that offered adaptive and advanced facilities to cloud-based networking by using Virtual Ad Hoc Mobile Cloud Computing Networks architecture (VAMCCNs). This is presented as a working case to address their global network challenges and to add cognitive support to the network design and implementation for better meeting traffic management and application requirements in mission objectives. The thesis concentrates on three main contributions. Firstly, an adaptive model, namely: a Heterogeneous Mobile Cloud Computing Network (HMCCN), was proposed to integrate different cloud networks architectures into one workflow. The cognitive data offloading task and the routing decision methods were applied using two different approaches: Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy system (FAH) as a first approach and cognitive Software Defined Network (SDN) model as a second centralised approach. Experimental results show improvement in network reliability and throughputs, minimised in both nodes’ energy consumption and network latency with efficient intelligent data load balance and network resources allocation with best cloud model selection. Secondly, based on a virtual Ad Hoc cloud network with a realistic Random Waypoint Motion (RWM) model, an innovative cognitive routing algorithm was presented to improve efficient and reliable route selection among multiple possible routes. Routing protocols based on conventional, Fuzzy logic used important parameters with two data collections and decisions techniques and a new adaptive Intelligent Hybrid Fuzzy-Neural routing protocol (IHFN) that included prior knowledge to the network of the underlying motion and energy parameters were all proposed and compared. Results with the new hybrid algorithm shown a significant improvement to solve the network end-to-end performance degradation problem. The new hybrid protocol improved network throughput with an average of 20% higher than traditional Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) Routing protocol, improved the usage of network resources and reduced the maintenance process in adynamic topologies network. Finally, based on datasets collected from a realistic motion RWM model in a virtual Ad Hoc cloud network, the performance behaviour of six selected deep learning algorithms to predict the next steps of positions, speed and residual battery energy values of these mobile nodes have been evaluated and compared. This work goes further by presenting two algorithm's training techniques to predict the next 300-time steps of position, speed, and energy. Results and dissuasion show the differences concerning prediction accuracy between using the single node dataset model or Multiple node's dataset model

Proceedings of the Conference on Production Systems and Logistics: CPSL 2022

[no abstract available

The 45th Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference: Global Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environment, Conference Proceedings, 23 - 25 November 2022, Western Sydney University, Kingswood Campus, Sydney, Australia

This is the proceedings of the 45th Australasian Universities Building Education Association (AUBEA) conference which will be hosted by Western Sydney University in November 2022. The conference is organised by the School of Engineering, Design, and Built Environment in collaboration with the Centre for Smart Modern Construction, Western Sydney University. This year’s conference theme is “Global Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environment”, and expects to publish over a hundred double-blind peer review papers under the proceedings

Measuring knowledge sharing processes through social network analysis within construction organisations

The construction industry is a knowledge intensive and information dependent industry. Organisations risk losing valuable knowledge, when the employees leave them. Therefore, construction organisations need to nurture opportunities to disseminate knowledge through strengthening knowledge-sharing networks. This study aimed at evaluating the formal and informal knowledge sharing methods in social networks within Australian construction organisations and identifying how knowledge sharing could be improved. Data were collected from two estimating teams in two case studies. The collected data through semi-structured interviews were analysed using UCINET, a Social Network Analysis (SNA) tool, and SNA measures. The findings revealed that one case study consisted of influencers, while the other demonstrated an optimal knowledge sharing structure in both formal and informal knowledge sharing methods. Social networks could vary based on the organisation as well as the individuals’ behaviour. Identifying networks with specific issues and taking steps to strengthen networks will enable to achieve optimum knowledge sharing processes. This research offers knowledge sharing good practices for construction organisations to optimise their knowledge sharing processes