Analysing and forecasting tourism demand in Vietnam with artificial neural networks

Mestrado APNORVietnam has experienced a tourism boom over the last decade with more than 18 million international tourists in 2019, compared to 1.5 million twenty-five years ago. Tourist spending has translated into rising employment and income for the tourism sector, making it the key driver to the socio-economic development of the country. Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnam´s tourism has suffered extreme economic losses. However, the number of international tourists is expected to reach the pre-pandemic levels in the next few years after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. Forecasting tourism demand plays an essential role in predicting future economic development. Accurate predictions of tourism volume would facilitate decision-makers and managers to optimize resource allocation as well as to balance environmental and economic aspects. Various methods to predict tourism demand have been introduced over the years. One of the most prominent approaches is Artificial Neural Network (ANN) thanks to its capability to handle highly volatile and non-linear data. Given the significance of tourism to the economy, a precise forecast of tourism demand would help to foresee the potential economic growth of Vietnam. First, the research aims to analyse Vietnam´s tourism sector with a special focus on international tourists. Next, several ANN architectures are experimented with the datasets from 2008 to 2020, to predict the monthly number of international tourists traveling to Vietnam including COVID-19 lockdown periods. The results showed that with the correct selection of ANN architectures and data from the previous 12 months, the best ANN models can forecast the number of international tourists for next month with a MAPE between 7.9% and 9.2%. As the method proves its forecasting accuracy, it would serve as a valuable tool for Vietnam´s policymakers and firm managers to make better investment and strategic decisions to promote tourism after the COVID-19 situation.O Vietname conheceu um boom turístico na última década com mais de 18 milhões de turistas internacionais em 2019, em comparação com 1,5 milhões há vinte e cinco anos. As despesas turísticas traduziram-se num aumento do emprego e de receitas no sector do turismo, tornando-o no principal motor do desenvolvimento socioeconómico do país. Perante a pandemia da COVID-19, o turismo no Vietname sofreu perdas económicas extremas. Porém, espera-se que o número de turistas internacionais, pós pandemia da COVID-19, atinja os níveis pré-pandémicos nos próximos anos. A previsão da procura turística desempenha um papel essencial na previsão do desenvolvimento económico futuro. Previsões precisas facilitariam os decisores e gestores a otimizar a afetação de recursos, bem como o equilíbrio entre os aspetos ambientais e económicos. Vários métodos para prever a procura turística têm sido introduzidos ao longo dos anos. Uma das abordagens mais proeminentes assenta na metodologia das Redes Neuronais Artificiais (ANN) dada a sua capacidade de lidar com dados voláteis e não lineares. Dada a importância do turismo para a economia, uma previsão precisa da procura turística ajudaria a prever o crescimento económico potencial do Vietname. Em primeiro lugar, a investigação tem por objetivo analisar o sector turístico do Vietname com especial incidência nos turistas internacionais. Em seguida, várias arquiteturas de ANN são experimentadas com um conjunto de dados de 2008 a 2020, para prever o número mensal de turistas internacionais que se deslocam ao Vietname, incluindo os períodos de confinamento relacionados com a COVID-19. Os resultados mostraram, com a correta seleção de arquiteturas ANN e dados dos 12 meses anteriores, os melhores modelos ANN podem prever o número de turistas internacionais para o próximo mês com uma MAPE entre 7,9% e 9,2%. Como o método evidenciou a sua precisão de previsão, o mesmo pode servir como uma ferramenta valiosa para os decisores políticos e gestores de empresas do Vietname, pois irá permitir fazer melhores investimentos e tomarem decisões estratégicas para promover o turismo pós situação da COVID-19

Modelling monthly influenza cases in Malaysia

The increasing trend in the number new cases of influenza every year as reported by WHO is concerning, especially in Malaysia. To date, there is no local research under healthcare sector that implements the time series forecasting methods to predict future disease outbreak in Malaysia, specifically influenza. Addressing the problem could increase awareness of the disease and could help healthcare workers to be more prepared in preventing the widespread of the disease. This paper intends to perform a hybrid ARIMA-SVR approach in forecasting monthly influenza cases in Malaysia. Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model (using Box-Jenkins method) and Support Vector Regression (SVR) model were used to capture the linear and nonlinear components in the monthly influenza cases, respectively. It was forecasted that the performance of the hybrid model would improve. The data from World Health Organization (WHO) websites consisting of weekly Influenza Serology A cases in Malaysia from the year 2006 until 2019 have been used for this study. The data were recategorized into monthly data. The findings of the study showed that the monthly influenza cases could be efficiently forecasted using three comparator models as all models outperformed the benchmark model (Naïve model). However, SVR with linear kernel produced the lowest values of RMSE and MAE for the test dataset suggesting the best performance out of the other comparators. This suggested that SVR has the potential to produce more consistent results in forecasting future values when compared with ARIMA and the ARIMA-SVR hybrid model

Prediksi Kedatangan Turis Asing Ke Indonesia Menggunakan Backpropagation Neural Networks

In this paper, a backpropagation neural network (BPNN) method with time series data have been explored. The BPNN method to predict the foreign tourist's arrival to Indonesia datasets have been implemented. The foreign tourist's arrival datasets were taken from the center agency on statistics (BPS) Indonesia. The experimental results showed that the BPNN method with two hidden layers were able to forecast foreign tourist's arrival to Indonesia. Where, the mean square error (MSE) as forecasting accuracy has been indicated. In this study, the BPNN method is able and recommended to be alternative methods for predicting time series datasets. Also, the BPNN method showed that effective and easy to use. In other words, BPNN method is capable to producing good value of forecasting.Keywords - BPNN; foreign tourists; BPS; MSEPemanfaatan backpropagation neural network (BPNN) dengan data deret waktu telah digunakan dalam paper ini. Metode BPNN telah digunakan untuk memprediksi data kedatangan turis asing ke Indonesia, dimana data turis tersebut diambil dari badan pusat statistik Indonesia (BPS). Hasil pengujian menunjukkan bahwa metode BPNN dengan dua lapisan tersembunyi mampu memodelkan dan meramalkan data kedatangan turis asing ke Indonesia yang diindikasikan dengan nilai mean square error (MSE). Penelitian ini merekomendasikan bahwa metode BPNN mampu menjadi alternative metode dalam memprediksi data yang berjenis deret waktu karena metode BPNN efektif dan lebih mudah digunakan serta mampu menghasilkan akurasi nilai peramalan yang baik

Model berbasis Sistem Kecerdasan Buatan yang Efektif: Analisis Kebijakan bagi Siswa Mengulang

Pendidikan Sekolah Dasar (SD) sangat penting dalam memberikan keterampilan dasar yang dibutuhkan siswa untuk bertahan dalam mengikuti dan memahami kelas-kelas pada jenjang di atasnya sehingga jika pondasi pendidikan SD kuat maka dapat meningkatkan kualitas pendidikan di Indonesia. Tujuan dari penelitian adalah membuat model arsitektur terbaik yang akan digunakan untuk melakukan peramalan pada jumlah siswa mengulang berdasarkan provinsi pada jenjnag Sekolah Dasar baik negeri dan swasta dengan model berbasis sistem kecerdasan buatan. Sumber data berasal dari data statistik pendidikan dengan url: http://statistik.data.kemdikbud.go.id/. Data terdiri dari 34 provinsi untuk tahun ajaran 2017/2017; 2017/2018; 2018/2019; 2019/2020. Metode solusi yang digunakan adalah back-propagation yang merupakan bagian dari sistem kecerdasan buatan dimana dalam menentukan model arsitektur terbaik dilakukan dengan menguji serangkaian arsitektur (2-5-1; 2-10-1; 2-15-1 dan 2-20-1) mengunakan fungsi aktivasi sigmoid dan parameter pendukung seperti performFcn = MSE; goal = 0.001; epochs = 10000; mc = 0.95 dan lr = 0.1.  Hasil menunjukkan back-propagation dapat diterapkan untuk melakukan peramalan dengan sistem kecerdasan buatan dengan menghasilkan sebuah model arsitektur terbaik yakni 2-10-1 dengan MSE pelatihan adalah 0.00099299, koefisien korelasi (R) pelatihan adalah 0.976972 pada epoch 81, MSE pengujian adalah 0.001325, koefisien korelasi (R) pengujian dengan akurasi 85%. Fakta baru menyebutkan bahwa akurasi sangat tergantung terhadap banyaknya data. Selain harus memperhatikan MSE, epoch dan durasi waktu pelatihan.  Diharapkan model arsitektur ini dapat membantu melakukan peramalan terhadap jumlah siswa mengulang pada jenjang Sekolah Dasar sehingga hasil dari peramalan dapat digunakan untuk membuat analisis kebijakan