A MULTI-TASK NEURAL NETWORK FOR SIMULTANEOUS REGRESSION AND CLASSIFICATION OF REGIONAL SECURITY AND QUALITY OF LIFE INDICES IN UKRAINE

The article states that in the conditions of the ongoing war and post-war reconstruction, the ability of united territorial communities to adapt to new socio-economic realities and effectively manage resources is of particular importance. Despite reform initiatives, many communities remain dependent on state funding, which reduces their ability to develop independently. Weak institutional capacity combined with economic instability creates risks for ensuring quality social services and sustainable growth. It is substantiated that, taking into account the above problems, a comprehensive analysis of the existing socio-economic and institutional mechanisms for managing territorial communities is necessary. Such an analysis will help identify key barriers, develop recommendations for overcoming them, and create conditions for increasing the efficiency of regional development in Ukraine, which is extremely relevant in the context of modern challenges and strategic priorities of the state. Territorial communities in Ukraine have become a key element of the decentralization reform in recent years, aimed at expanding the powers of local self-government and strengthening regional development. It is analyzed that the development of territorial communities is complicated by the impact of military operations, which created additional challenges for ensuring stability, security and sustainable development of regions. The regulatory and legal framework for the management of united territorial communities in Ukraine is constantly being improved, taking into account the challenges of decentralization and the need to strengthen regional development. Economic instruments that ensure the financial autonomy of communities include tax benefits, inter-budgetary transfers. It is found that the war in Ukraine has increased the need to form effective socio-economic and institutional mechanisms for managing communities, as local authorities have found themselves on the front lines of ensuring the livelihoods of the population. Many territorial communities have suffered significant destruction of infrastructure, lost economic potential, and have also faced mass displacement of citizens. In such conditions, effective management becomes not only a matter of development, but also a vital necessity. These tools stimulate the development of communities, create conditions for the implementation of important projects and strengthen their financial stability, which is especially relevant in the context of military challenges.

The article concentrates on the fact that conditions of regional development in Ukraine have changed significantly in the last decade. Therefore, the following initiatives should be taken: to formulate a new regional policy, to further decentralize, and strengthen the competitiveness of territorial communities, or in other words, basic administrative units. The specific features of the competitiveness of territorial communities are outlined. The author also establishes a classification of factors relevant to the competitiveness of territorial communities and identifies new aspects of their formation and functioning. The paper presents the following integrated criteria of competitiveness: competitive advantages, self- reliance, and economic security of citizens. The author provides an empirical analysis of united territorial communities in the Ternopil region based on the indicators of financial self- reliance of the communities, which include income per capita, budget subsidy level, the share of management costs in own resources (without transfers). Special attention is paid to a resource-based analysis and some approaches to the assessment of competitiveness of territorial communities are proposed. The results indicate that there are some limiting factors that might hinder the competitiveness of territorial communities, namely: poor production and living conditions; underdevelopment and deterioration of social and cultural sphere; lack of transport facilities; ecological problems of diminishing diversification and primary production; narrow focus of direct foreign investments; investments in industries with rapid turnover of capital; low level of the competitiveness of manufacturing facilities located in the united territorial communities; poor qualifications of personnel; insufficient labour force; poor demographic situation. The article emphasizes the importance to formulate a strategy for strengthening the competitiveness of united territorial communities as a component of the Strategy for its development and implementation of the weighted algorithm for strateging. A range of strategic priorities of effective regional policies for increasing the competitiveness of territorial communities are described, and institutional barriers of their implementation are determined. In addition, the author formulates mechanisms for increasing the competitiveness of united territorial communities under the conditions of decentralization, particularly in terms of scenario modelling, strateging, implementing local marketing, building a brand identity of a territory, municipal financial management, risk management, etc. It is claimed that there is a great difference in initial conditions of united territorial communities and differences in using resources, which requires a situational approach and adherence to the principles of balanced development (support) within the region referring to some depressed united territorial communities.

Regional development in the context of implementing European practices is a key factor in the realization of Ukraine's European integration strategy. This requires the further introduction of tools aimed at overcoming centralized management practices in favor of decentralization tools that provide greater autonomy for local and regional authorities, creating conditions for accelerating the development of communities and regions. This topic becomes particularly relevant during the state of martial law in Ukraine, which necessitates the consolidation of resources to ensure national security and defense, while also requiring the resolution of pressing social issues (refugees, business relocation, etc.). Therefore, the aim of the article is to study the impact of decentralization on regional development processes in wartime conditions. The methodological basis of the research is a harmonious synthesis of three approaches: systemic, institutional, and structural-functional, each of which allows for the analysis of the role and potential of implementing practices and mechanisms of decentralization to enhance the effectiveness of public management during large-scale crises. It has been determined that the war has already inflicted colossal damage on the country’s economy, the overcoming of which is impossible without the implementation of flexible management practices, further redistribution of resources in favor of communities and regions, and the attraction of donor assistance and investments for recovery. Decentralization facilitates targeted resource use and allows for attracting investments for specific projects that will aid the development of communities and regions. On the other hand, decentralization tools enable local and regional problems to be addressed more promptly. The positive impact of decentralization on government bodies has been demonstrated in terms of their responsiveness to new challenges and threats posed by the war. It has been noted that the success of decentralization depends on the level of civic engagement: the degree of citizen involvement in decision-making, public initiatives, and so on. The main promising directions of decentralization have been identified, which should ensure the development of both territorial communities and regions, as well as promote the attraction of investment for post-war recovery. All of this is intended to enhance the resilience of Ukrainian regions and promote sustainable post-war development.

Knowledge of the optical properties of blood plays important role in medical diagnostics and therapeutic applications in laser medicine. In this paper, we present a very rapid and accurate artificial intelligent approach using Dragonfly Algorithm/Support Vector Machine models to estimate the optical properties of blood, specifically the absorption coefficient, and the scattering coefficient using key parameters such as wavelength (nm), hematocrit percentage (%), and saturation of oxygen (%), in building very highly accurate Dragonfly Algorithm-Support Vector Regression models (DA-SVR). 1000 training and testing sets were selected in the wavelength range of 250-1200 nm and the hematocrit of 0-100%. The performance of the proposed method is characterized by high accuracy indicated in the correlation coefficients (R) of 0.9994 and 0.9957 for absorption and scattering coefficients, respectively. In addition, the root mean squared error values (RMSE) of 0.972 and 2.9193, as well as low mean absolute error values (MAE) of 0.2173 and 0.2423, this result showed a strong match with the experimental data. The models can be used to accurately predict the absorption and scattering coefficients of blood, and provide a reliable reference for future studies on the optical properties of human blood.

Deformation during drying is a major physical change influencing drying kinetics and final product quality. Therefore, accurate prediction of shrinkage kinetics is essential for determining the optimal drying conditions for these foods. Shrinkage kinetics is greatly influenced by their structural mobility (rubbery-glassy transition) and viscoelastic properties. The current deformation models lack a comprehensive integration of structural mobility and viscoelasticity concepts, resulting in limitation in attaining insights on physiochemical state variations and viscoelastic stresses developed during drying. In order to overcome this limitation, this study proposes a novel mechanistic shrinkage model that combines solid matrix mobility-based shrinkage velocity and viscoelasticity consideration, incorporating variable mechanical properties to simulate deformation arising from moisture loss and pressure gradient respectively. Comparison between predicted drying kinetics and shrinkage evolution with experimental observation yielded close agreement, achieving low mean absolute error values. As the drying process progressed, a distinct anisotropic shrinkage pattern emerged, which is attributed to varied structural mobility based on temperature and moisture distribution across the food sample. Notably, shrinkage driven by moisture loss significantly outweighed that induced by pressure, exerting a predominant influence on overall volume change. Furthermore, the model demonstrated heightened sensitivity to water transport parameters compared to mechanical factors, which indicates the significance of moisture dynamics in shaping the drying process. Combined consideration of physiochemical changes and viscoelastic concept in the developed deformation model extends new possibility towards optimizing the drying process as well as quality aspect evaluation.

Various brain activities can be captured by electroencephalographic signals, which can then be used to detect epilepsy considering that the epileptic seizures are caused by a disturbance in the electrophysiological activity of the brain. Accordingly, epileptic seizure prediction usually requires a careful analysis of electroencephalography (EEG) records. In this study, we examined a large intracranial EEG dataset obtained from five pharmacoresistant epilepsy patients. Specifically, we first applied hidden Markov models to parse the amplitude under a probabilistic description considering the observed data as the outcome of either one of the three hidden states, namely, normal, subclinical (seizure) and clinical (seizure), which is in line with the setup proposed in previous studies. Our results indicate that there are indeed a maximum of 1.7% subclinical and about 1% clinical events, which comply with the observations from other studies. Next, we assumed EEG signals to form complex time series, and considered time-series prediction methods to forecast the future events. Such predictions are of interest to predetermine the possibility of a seizure onset and taking a preventive strategy. This task was performed within a deterministic framework by applying deep learning methods. An ensemble model was created using one-dimensional convolution net in conjunction with long short-term memory units and deep neural networks. We observe that the proposed time series prediction method is highly accurate as indicated by the low mean absolute error values and the high conformity of the predictions to the ground truth values.

This study underscores the critical role of heat transfer modeling in the design and optimization of heat exchangers, recognizing the challenges posed by traditional numerical methods. To address the need for more efficient alternatives, machine learning emerges as a promising solution, leveraging its capacity to unravel intricate relationships in heat transfer processes. The research focuses on forced convection heat transfer involving nanoparticles (specifically TiO2, Al2O3, and Cu) dispersed in water, employing the Lagrangian–Eulerian approach under turbulent flow conditions with a constant surface heat flux. Machine-learning techniques, namely extreme gradient boosting, support vector regression, and tree regression are employed to predict heat transfer outcomes based on collected data. The achieved results exhibit promising accuracy levels, with eXtreme gradient boosting, support vector regression, and tree regression algorithm models demonstrating impressive accuracies of 91%, 91%, and 94%, respectively. The mean absolute errors for these machine-learning models were recorded as 1.07, 7.24, and 3.74. This research serves as a demonstration of the potential of machine-learning methodologies in modeling complex physical systems, as evidenced by their efficiency in capturing the behavior of nanofluids under various conditions. The obtained accuracy and low mean absolute error values indicate the robustness of these machine-learning models in predicting heat transfer results. The implications of these findings are substantial for the field of heat exchanger design and optimization. The study suggests that machine-learning techniques offer a more efficient and cost-effective approach compared to traditional numerical simulations. By leveraging the capabilities of these models, there is potential for enhanced accuracy and efficiency in the design and optimization processes of heat exchangers, contributing to advancements in thermal engineering.

The final attenuation and twisting of fiber take place at ring spinning machine and hence its optimized performance is very crucial in terms of yarn quality. Drafting at ring spinning machine has a decisive effect on quality. There exist many influencing parameters in the spinning geometry that have to be optimized for manufacturing of quality yarn. The present research work was carried out to develop the Artificial neural networks (ANN) based prediction model for the polyester/cotton blended ring spun yarns by using these influencing parameters as inputs. ANN prediction model was developed using resilient backpropogation algorithm. Yarn quality parameters like yarn evenness, hairiness and tensile parameters were predicted. The low mean absolute error values for the yarn quality parameters proved that it is possible to predict the yarn quality on the basis of spinning geometry for cotton/polyester blended ring spun yarns using Resilient Back Propogation Neural Networks.

In the context of decentralization reform, the issue of ensuring the financial capacity of the united territorial communities (UTG) remains relevant and needs further study.The article examines the current state and sources of financial capacity of OTG of Ukraine in the current economic conditions. The relationship between the decentralization reform and the decentralization reform of the country’s budget system, which promotes the financial autonomy of the regions and the OTGs created in their territories, has been studied. The composition and structure of revenues and expenditures of local budgets of Ukraine for 2014—2018, which form the basis of financing OTG budgets, are analyzed. It was revealed that the main share in the structure of local budget revenues is made up of official transfers from the state budget. The conclusion is made on the gradual increase of the revenue side of local budgets during the reform period. The analysis of sources of financial resources of OTG and incomes and expenses on groups of OTG created in the territory of Ukraine for 2019 is revealed. Significant differentiation on incomes and expenses on groups of OTG is revealed that testifies to economic inequality in development of territories and resource maintenance and the quality of public services received by residents in the respective OTGs.The necessity of studying and implementing the positive experience of the EU countries in carrying out local self-government reforms is substantiated. It was emphasized that the creation of the State Fund for Regional Development in Ukraine provided an opportunity to minimize the corruption component in the distribution of funds from the state budget to local budgets on the basis of competitive selection of projects for funding. The insufficiency of budget funds for financial support of OTG is substantiated. It is proposed to expand the range of sources to ensure the financial capacity of OTG, adding to them the investment, credit, grant components and development of startup projects in the OTG.

The article discusses the problems of managing Ukraine’s economic recovery after the Russian-Ukrainian war, which should be taken into account when planning the process of regional and local recovery and the solution of which will help economic growth. The author outlines the results of the decentralization and regional development reforms implemented in Ukraine after 2014: development of a detailed policy, management, and financing systems for regional development; growth of financing for regional and local development; empowerment of regional and local authorities; improvement of the quality of administrative and social services; creation of various policy coordination bodies at the national, regional, and local levels, e.g., regional development agencies. The article analyzes the following development problems and territorial imbalances: mechanisms and practices of financing regional development in Ukraine (need to be strengthened, as their deficiencies significantly affect investment results), the capacity of regions and territorial communities (its strengthening is crucial for effective promotion of post-war recovery), the lack of a clear division of tasks and responsibilities between levels of government (a major problem for the effectiveness of the process of Ukraine’s recovery after the war), poor coordination between national, regional, and local authorities (limits the efficiency and performance at different levels of government). The author suggests implementing the following steps to ensure Ukraine’s recovery after the war, taking into account the peculiarities of regional and local development: to continue the reforms of regional development and decentralization; to promote the exchange of experience between Ukraine and other countries; to ensure that informed, factual, and evidence-based decisions on reconstruction and recovery are made at the regional and local levels; to create mechanisms to prevent corruption in the process of using recovery funds by local authorities; involve regions and territorial communities in the development of immediate recovery schemes and long-term development strategies; to introduce mechanisms at the national and local levels to support the transparent use of funding for Ukraine’s recovery by regional and local governments; to limit the number of regional and local recovery funds to avoid fragmentation of investment costs; to assist (with the support of international partners) regions and territorial communities to strengthen capacity and develop expertise in areas important for the post-war recovery period; to build the technical capacity of authorities at all levels to create, analyze, and disseminate geographically disaggregated socio-economic, demographic, and welfare data. Special attention is paid to the need to simultaneously address urgent recovery tasks and long-term development objectives, as well as to ensure a strong and inclusive recovery, taking into account existing territorial imbalances and governance problems. It will be a feature of Ukraine’s post-war recovery.

The article attempts to substantiate the essence and features of cooperation between territorial communities as a mechanism for implementing the concept of multilevel governance at the subnational level, to identify methodological approaches to the application of relevant instruments and practical aspects of state policy of regional development in Ukraine based on the analysis of regulatory and legal principles and publications of Ukrainian scientists. Regarding the main practical aspects of organizing cooperation between territorial communities, which are characteristic of the processes of optimizing the use of both internal resources based on joint use and attracting external ones, it is worth noting such opportunities as: reducing investment costs taking into account the joint use of funds; ensuring advantages through the joint use of material and technical resources, saving money through joint procurement and increasing volumes; strengthening positions for attracting external resources, such as: grants, subsidies, loans; optimizing other processes, such as: logistical advantages through planning joint transport routes; attracting specialized highly qualified personnel to solve specific industry problems, setting up production systems to meet local needs, improving the quality of existing services for the population and expanding their range, including through the joint use of electronic services and digital solutions.

In modern world, the relevance of researching new approaches to the formation and functioning of economically capable territories in order to overcome significant problems in both the rural and the urban territorial communities and ensure their sustainable development under the influence of exacerbation of endogenous and exogenous risks is significantly increasing. Obviously, the current crisis situation of the territorial communities of the country, especially rural areas, cannot satisfy the interests and needs of citizens, communities and enterprises of all forms of ownership, as well as does not contribute to providing residents of the territories with jobs and modern public services. In addition, the search for new strategic approaches to the management of the development of territories aimed at reducing the differentiation of the level of socio-economic development of regions (territories, communities, etc) is actively carried out by equalization of conditions of economic activity, rational use of their production and resource potential, achievement of sustainable economic growth, increase of socio-economic indicators of living standards of citizens of Ukraine. The significance of the formation of the necessary legal framework for the functioning of a separate administrative-territorial system (region, territory, community, etc), assessment of its condition for further use in public administration of territorial development determines the importance of developing and implementing an effective system of regulatory documents to solve socio-economic problems and stimulate sustainable regional development in Ukraine, in particular territorial communities.

European and world experience testifies that the major element of reform of decentralization in Ukraine is reformation of local selfgovernment, creation of capable territorial communities, that must be able to satisfy the necessities related to the vital functions of habitants of settlements, and also properly to provide realization of their rights. The input of new mechanism of the budgetary adjusting changed the system of total balancing of all local budgets on the horizontal smoothing of taxability of territories depending on the level of receivabless on one habitant. The significant amount of budgetary facilities remains in the complete order of local authorities. Reform of interbudgetary relations stimulates territorial communities more effective to fill the estimates, become self-sufficient and carefully plan the charges. The local government independently decides on which needs spend budgetary funds, which is especially important for the development of united territorial communities. The article examines the essence of budget decentralization, its role and place in the development of united territorial communities. An assessment and analysis of budgetary decentralization in Ukraine has been carried out. The features of the introduction of budgetary decentralization in Ukraine are investigated, the main factors influencing the income and expenditures of local budgets are determined. Implementation of the decentralization reform, which has been ongoing in Ukraine for six years, includes a set of sectoral reforms, in particular, the reform of the administrative-territorial structure and the system of local self-government, and See also fiscal legislation. One of the key objectives of the reform is the voluntary unification of territorial communities and the formation of capable administrative-territorial units of the basic level. Thanks to the introduction of inter-municipal cooperation, the communities were able to consolidate their efforts and to implement common projects. In particular, 1354 territorial communities have signed 604 cooperation agreements. That is, the process of decentralization continues, they believed in it, and the resistance of opponents is being overcome. First, the reform of financial decentralization, local budget revenues show positive dynamics: in 2014 their volume was UAH 80.2 billion, then over six years, own revenues to the general fund of local budgets has increased by UAH 209.9 billion. and represented in 2020 UAH 290.1 billion. Total receipts from the general and special funds for this period increased by UAH 210.2 billion. This is a real instrument of influence on the achievement of results and responsibility for the trust of communities. The basis for the growth of revenues of local budgets was laid thanks to the changes adopted in 2015 to the Budget and Tax Codes of Ukraine regarding the transfer of additional budgetary powers to local governments and the consolidation of stable sources of income for their implementation. Financial decentralization in Ukraine has significantly accelerated the dynamics of investment activity. An important positive result of the reform of interbudgetary relations is the annual increase in investment resources of local budgets. After a sharp decline in investment activity in 2014, the volume of capital investments amounted to UAH 5.9 billion, while in 2020 their volume amounted to UAH 43.6 billion. On the average capital investments from local budgets in Ukraine for the years under study has increased by UAH 33.4 billion, the capital investment growth index was 7.39. Further implementation of the reform of budgetary decentralization and ensuring the effectiveness of the mechanism of budgetary regulation of socio-economic development requires expanding the rights of local authorities, strengthening their budgetary independence and determining their responsibility.

The decentralization reform in Ukraine has resulted in creating the primary level of the administrative-territorial system – territorial communities (TC). Rural settlements are also included in TCs, consisting of more than 25 and even 50. Today, TCs as administrative entities face the challenge of uniting communities and preserving and developing their people. The purpose of the paper is to substantiate the necessity and principles of TCs inclusive development, identify the situation of their rural communities referring to the example of Lokachynska TC, and test approaches to assessing their involvement in the functioning of the community. The following research methods were used: dialectical and abstract-logical (in the analysis of threats to rural communities due to their merger in the TC and justification of their inclusive development principles), monographic (to characterize Lokachinskaya TC), economic and statistical (in assessing the level of inclusive community development). It has been proven that one of the tasks of amalgamating territorial communities, especially those that include too many rural settlements is ensuring development based on inclusiveness. The TCs’ development and their rural communities aimed at reducing poverty, overcoming the economic, social, and political exclusion of people living in rural areas providing them with the opportunity to have a tangible impact on their lives is defined as inclusive development. The main characteristics of Lokachynska TC and the conditions of its rural communities’ functioning are revealed. Following the determining methodology of the rural sector of social inclusiveness, which is adapted to the community level, the involvement of Lokachynska TC communities in the economic, social and socio-political spheres was assessed. The study results can be used in strategies and plans for developing territorial communities, considering the specifics of community in each settlement, and identifying overcoming ways of its economic and/or social exclusion.

Wildfires are exorbitantly cataclysmic disasters that lead to the destruction of forest cover, wildlife, land resources, human assets, reduced soil fertility and global warming. Every year wildfires wreck havoc across the globe. Therefore, there is a need of an efficient and reliable system for real-time wildfire monitoring to dilute their disastrous effects. Internet of Things (IoT) has demonstrated remarkable evolution and has been successfully adopted in environmental monitoring domain. This paper proposes a collaborative IoT–Fog–Cloud framework based on soft computing techniques for real-time wildfire monitoring, prediction and forecasting. The framework includes proposals for classifying a forest terrain into its appropriate wildfire proneness class using fuzzy K-nearest-neighbor classifier by analyzing wildfire influent attributes and wildfire consequent attributes. Moreover, real-time emergency alert generation mechanism based on temporal mining has been proposed in event of adverse wildfire conditions. Estimation of future wildfire proneness levels of a forest terrain using Holt–Winter’s forecasting model also forms an integral part of the proposed framework. Implementation results reveal that high values of accuracy, specificity, sensitivity and precision averaging to 93.97%, 92.35%, 93.01% and 91.24% are attained for determination of wildfire proneness of a forest terrain. Low values of mean absolute error (MAE), mean square error (MSE), mean absolute percentage error and root mean square error (RMSE) averaging to 0.665, 2, 11.705 and 1.405, respectively, for real-time alert generation are registered, thereby increasing the utility of the proposed framework. Wildfire proneness forecasting also yields highly accurate results with low values of MAE, MSE and RMSE averaging to 0.166667, 0.25 and 0.492799, respectively.