An Optimized Artificial Neural Network Model using Genetic Algorithm for Prediction of Traffic Emission Concentrations

Global warming and climate change have become universal issues recently. One of the leading sources of climate change is automobiles. Automobiles are the prime source of air pollution in urban areas globally. This has resulted in a problematic and chaotic state in the development of an automatic traffic management system for capturing and monitoring vehicles' hourly and daily passage. With the significant advancement of sensor technology, atmospheric information such as air pollution, meteorological, and motor vehicle data can be harvested and stored in databases. However, due to the complexity and non-linear associations between air quality, meteorological, and traffic variables, it is difficult for the traditional statistical and mathematical models to analyze them. Recently, machine learning algorithms in the field of traffic emissions prediction have become a popular tool. Meteorological and traffic variables influence the variation and the trend of the traffic pollutants. In this paper, an optimized artificial neural network (OANN) was developed to enhance the existing artificial neural network (ANN) model by updating the initial weights in the network using a Genetic Algorithm (GA). The OANN model was implemented to predict the concentration of CO, NO, NO2, and NOx pollutants produced by motor vehicles in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. OANN was compared with Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Random Forest (RF), and Decision Tree (DT) models. The results show that the developed OANN model performed better than the ANN, RF, and DT models with the lowest MSE values of 0.0247 for CO, 0.0365 for NO, 0.0542 NO2, and 0.1128 for NOx. It can be concluded that the developed OANN model is a better choice in predicting traffic emission concentrations. The developed OANN model can help environmental agencies monitor traffic-related air pollution levels efficiently and take necessary measures to ensure the effectiveness of traffic management policy. The OANN model can also help decision-makers mitigate traffic emissions to protect citizens living in the neighborhood of highways.