The Gradient-Boosting Method for Tackling High Computing Demand in Underwater Acoustic Propagation Modeling

Abstract

Agent-based models return spatiotemporal information used to process time series of specific parameters for specific individuals called “agents”. For complex, advanced and detailed models, this typically comes at the expense of high computing times and requires access to important computing resources. This paper provides an example on how machine learning and artificial intelligence can help predict an agent-based model’s output values at regular intervals without having to rely on time-consuming numerical calculations. Gradient-boosting XGBoost under GNU package’s R was used in the social-ecological agent-based model 3MTSim to interpolate, in the time domain, sound pressure levels received at the agents’ positions that were occupied by the endangered St. Lawrence Estuary and Saguenay Fjord belugas and caused by anthropomorphic noise of nearby transiting merchant vessels. A mean error of 3.23 ± 3.76(1σ) dB on received sound pressure levels was predicted when compared to ground truth values that were processed using rigorous, although time-consuming, numerical algorithms. The computing time gain was significant, i.e., it was estimated to be 10-fold higher than the ground truth simulation, whilst maintaining the original temporal resolution.