Rice Blast Disease Forecasting for Northern Philippines

Rice blast disease has become an enigmatic problem in several rice growing ecosystems of both tropical and temperate regions of the world. In this study, we develop models for predicting the occurrence and severity of rice blast disease, with the aim of helping to prevent or at least mitigate the spread of such disease. Data from 2 government agencies in selected provinces from northern Philippines were gathered, cleaned and synchronized for the purpose of building the predictive models. After the data synchronization, dimensionality reduction of the feature space was done, using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), to determine the most important weather features that contribute to the occurrence of the rice blast disease. Using these identified features, ANN and SVM binary classifiers (for prediction of the occurrence or non-occurrence of rice blast) and regression models (for estimation of the severity of an occurring rice blast) were built and tested. These classifiers and regression models produced sufficiently accurate results, with the SVM models showing a significantly better predictive power than the corresponding ANN models. These findings can be used in developing a system for forecasting rice blast, which may help reduce the occurrence of the disease

Extending the Teknomo-Fernandez Background Image Generation Algorithm on the HSV Colour Space

Background subtraction, a procedure required in many video analysis applications such as object tracking , is dependent on the model background image. One efficient algorithm for background image generation is the Teknomo-Fernandez (TF) Algorithm, which uses modal values and a tournament-like strategy to produce a good background image very quickly. A previous study showed that the TF algorithm can be extended from the original 3 frames per tournament (T F 3) to T F 5 and T F 7, resulting in increased accuracies at a cost of increased processing times. In this study, we explore extending the T F 3, T F 5 and T F 7 from the original RGB colour space to the HSV colour space. A ground truth model background image for HSV was also developed for comparing the performances between the TF implementations on the RGB and HSV channels. The results show that the TF algorithm generates accurate background images when implemented on the HSV colour space. However, the RGB implementations still exhibit higher accuracies than the corresponding HSV implementations. Finally, background subtraction was applied on the HSV generated background images. A comparison with other promising baseline techniques validates the competitiveness of the TF algorithm implemented on HSV channels

Comparative Analysis of Combinations of Dimension Reduction and Data Mining Techniques for Malware Detection

Many malware detectors utilize data mining techniques as primary tools for pattern recognition. As the number of new and evolving malware continues to rise, there is an increasing need for faster and more accurate detectors. However, for a given malware detector, detection speed and accuracy are usually inversely related. This study explores several configurations of classification combined with feature selection. An optimization function involving accuracy and processing time is used to evaluate each configuration. A real data set provided by Trend Micro Philippines is used for the study. Among 18 di↵erent configurations studied, it is shown that J4.8 without feature selection is best for cases where accuracy is extremely important. On the other hand, when time performance is more crucial, applying a Na¨ıve Bayes classifier on a reduced data set (using Gain Ratio Attribute Evaluation to select the top 35 features only) gives the best results

Rice Blast Disease Forecasting for Northern Philippines

Abstract: -Rice blast disease has become an enigmatic problem in several rice growing ecosystems of both tropical and temperate regions of the world. In this study, we develop models for predicting the occurrence and severity of rice blast disease, with the aim of helping to prevent or at least mitigate the spread of such disease. Data from 2 government agencies in selected provinces from northern Philippines were gathered, cleaned and synchronized for the purpose of building the predictive models. After the data synchronization, dimensionality reduction of the feature space was done, using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), to determine the most important weather features that contribute to the occurrence of the rice blast disease. Using these identified features, ANN and SVM binary classifiers (for prediction of the occurrence or non-occurrence of rice blast) and regression models (for estimation of the severity of an occurring rice blast) were built and tested. These classifiers and regression models produced sufficiently accurate results, with the SVM models showing a significantly better predictive power than the corresponding ANN models. These findings can be used in developing a system for forecasting rice blast, which may help reduce the occurrence of the disease

Performance comparison of the Teknomo-Fernandez algorithm on the RGB and HSV colour spaces

Segmentation of the foreground objects is the primary step in many video analysis applications. The accuracy of the segmentation is dependent on an accurate background image that is used for background subtraction. The Teknomo-Fernandez (TF) algorithm is an efficient algorithm that quickly generates a good background image. A previous study showed the extendibility of the TF algorithm to higher number of frames per tournament, with the original 3 frames TF 3L to be the most efficient and best configuration for actual implementation. In this study, we examine the performance of the TF algorithm on both RGB and HSV colour spaces using the TF 3, 4 configuration and the Wallflower dataset. A simple background subtraction with threshold is implemented. The performances are measured numerically using the number of false negative and false positive pixel count against the provided ideal foreground image. The results show that the TF algorithm implemented using both RGB and HSV generates accurate background images in a wide range of video settings. The HSV implementation exhibits higher accuracies than the RGB implementation for majority of the test videos with the cost of an increase in processing time