Prediction Method of Railway Freight Volume Based on Genetic Algorithm Improved General Regression Neural Network

Abstract

Railway freight transportation is an important part of the national economy. The accurate forecast of railway freight volume is significant to the planning, construction, operation, and decision-making of railways. Railway freight volume forecasting methods are complex and nonlinear due to the imbalance of supply and demand in the railway freight market as well as the complicated and different influences of various factors on freight volume. The relation between some information is easily ignored when the traditional method of railway freight volume forecasting is used for prediction based on causality or time series. After analyzing the application status of the generalized regression neural network (GRNN) in the prediction method of railway freight volume, this paper improves the performance of this model using an improved neural network. In the improved method, genetic algorithm (GA) is adopted to search the optimal spread, which is the only factor of the GRNN, and then the optimal spread is used for forecasting in the GRNN. In the process of railway freight volume forecasting, through this method, the increments of data are taken in the calculation process and the goal values are obtained after calculation as the forecasted results. Compared to the results of the GRNN, higher prediction accuracy is obtained through the GA-improved GRNN. Finally, the railway freight volumes in the next 2 years are forecasted based on this method and this improved method can provide a new approach for predicting the railway freight volume.

Keywords

• railway freight volume
• forecasting
• general regression neural network
• genetic algorithm