Forecasting Short-term Container Vessel Traffic Volume Using Hybrid ARIMA-NN Model

A combination of linear and non-linear models results in a more accurate prediction in comparison with using linear or non-linear models individually to forecast time series data. This paper utilizes the linear autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and non-linear artificial neural network (ANN) model to develop a new hybrid ARIMA-ANN model for prediction of container vessel traffic volume. The suggested hybrid method consists of an optimized feed-forward, back-propagation model with a hybrid training algorithm. The database of monthly traffic of Rajaee Port for thirteen years from 2005-2018 is taken into account. The performance of the developed model in forecasting short-term traffic volume is evaluated using various performance criteria such as correlation coefficient (R), mean absolute deviation (MAD), mean squared error (MSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). The developed model provides useful insights into container traffic behavior. Comparing the results with the real data-sets demonstrates the superior performance of the hybrid models than using models individually in forecasting traffic data.