Ensemble Voting Regression Based on Machine Learning for Predicting Medical Waste: A Case from Turkey

Abstract

Predicting medical waste (MW) properly is vital for an effective waste management system (WMS), but it is difficult because of inadequate data and various factors that impact MW. This study’s primary objective was to develop an ensemble voting regression algorithm based on machine learning (ML) algorithms such as random forests (RFs), gradient boosting machines (GBMs), and adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) to predict the MW for Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey. This was the first study to use ML algorithms to predict MW, to our knowledge. First, three ML algorithms were developed based on official data. To compare their performances, performance measures such as mean absolute deviation (MAE), root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and coefficient of determination (R-squared) were calculated. Among the standalone ML models, RF achieved the best performance. Then, these base models were used to construct the proposed ensemble voting regression (VR) model utilizing weighted averages according to the base models’ performances. The proposed model outperformed three baseline models, with the lowest RMSE (843.70). This study gives an effective tool to practitioners and decision-makers for planning and constructing medical waste management systems by predicting the MW quantity.