Novel approach for forecasting the blast-induced AOp using a hybrid fuzzy system and firefly algorithm

Abstract

Air overpressure (AOp) produced by blasting is one of the environmental hazards of mining operations. Accordingly, the accurate prediction of AOp is very important, and this issue requires the application of appropriate prediction models. With this in view, this paper aims to propose a new data-driven model in the prediction of AOp using a hybrid model of fuzzy system (FS) and firefly algorithm (FA). This combination is abbreviated as FS-FA model. The used data-sets in the proposed FS-FA model were arranged in a format of three input parameters. In total, 86 sets of the mentioned parameters were prepared. To avoid over-fitting, the data-sets were divided into two parts of training (80%) and test sets (20%). Three quantitative standard statistical performance evaluation measures, variance account for (VAF), coefficient correlation (R2) and root mean squared error (RMSE), were used to check the accuracy of the FS-FA model. According to the results, the R2 and RMSE values obtained from the proposed FS-FA model were equal to 0.977 and 1.241 (for testing phase), respectively, which clearly demonstrate the merits of the proposed FS-FA model. In other words, the obtained R2 and RMSE show that FS-FA model has high prediction level in the modeling of blast-induced AOp.