An accurate assessment of the pipes’ conditions is required for effective management of the trunk sewers. In this paper the semi-Markov model was developed and tested using the sewer dataset from the Zublin trunk sewer in Baghdad, Iraq, in order to evaluate the future performance of the sewer. For the development of this model the cumulative waiting time distribution of sewers was used in each condition that was derived directly from the sewer condition class and age data. Results showed that the semi-Markov model was inconsistent with the data by adopting ( 2 test) and also, showed that the error in prediction is due to lack of data on the sewer waiting times at each condition state which can be solved by using successive conditi

In this study, we made a comparison between LASSO & SCAD methods, which are two special methods for dealing with models in partial quantile regression. (Nadaraya & Watson Kernel) was used to estimate the non-parametric part ;in addition, the rule of thumb method was used to estimate the smoothing bandwidth (h). Penalty methods proved to be efficient in estimating the regression coefficients, but the SCAD method according to the mean squared error criterion (MSE) was the best after estimating the missing data using the mean imputation method

Metaheuristic is one of the most well-known fields of research used to find optimum solutions for non-deterministic polynomial hard (NP-hard) problems, for which it is difficult to find an optimal solution in a polynomial time. This paper introduces the metaheuristic-based algorithms and their classifications and non-deterministic polynomial hard problems. It also compares the performance of two metaheuristic-based algorithms (Elephant Herding Optimization algorithm and Tabu Search) to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), which is one of the most known non-deterministic polynomial hard problems and widely used in the performance evaluations for different metaheuristics-based optimization algorithms. The experimental results of Ele

     In this paper, one of the Machine Scheduling Problems is studied, which is the problem of scheduling a number of products (n-jobs) on one (single) machine with the multi-criteria objective function. These functions are (completion time, the tardiness, the earliness, and the late work) which formulated as . The branch and bound (BAB) method are used as the main method for solving the problem, where four upper bounds and one lower bound are proposed and a number of dominance rules are considered to reduce the number of branches in the search tree. The genetic algorithm (GA) and the particle swarm optimization (PSO) are used to obtain two of the upper bounds. The computational results are calculated by coding (progr

In the present paper, three reliable iterative methods are given and implemented to solve the 1D, 2D and 3D Fisher’s equation. Daftardar-Jafari method (DJM), Temimi-Ansari method (TAM) and Banach contraction method (BCM) are applied to get the exact and numerical solutions for Fisher's equations. The reliable iterative methods are characterized by many advantages, such as being free of derivatives, overcoming the difficulty arising when calculating the Adomian polynomial boundaries to deal with nonlinear terms in the Adomian decomposition method (ADM), does not request to calculate Lagrange multiplier as in the Variational iteration method (VIM) and there is no need to create a homotopy like in the Homotopy perturbation method (H

     In this article, we aim to define a universal set consisting of the subscripts of the fuzzy differential equation (5) except the two elements  and , subsets of that universal set are defined according to certain conditions. Then, we use the constructed universal set with its subsets for suggesting an analytical method which facilitates solving fuzzy initial value problems of any order by using the strongly generalized H-differentiability. Also, valid sets with graphs for solutions of fuzzy initial value problems of higher orders are found.

This study presents the execution of an iterative technique suggested by Temimi and Ansari (TA) method to approximate solutions to a boundary value problem of a 4th-order nonlinear integro-differential equation (4th-ONIDE) of the type Kirchhoff which appears in the study of transverse vibration of hinged shafts. This problem is difficult to solve because there is a non-linear term under the integral sign, however, a number of authors have suggested iterative methods for solving this type of equation. The solution is obtained as a series that merges with the exact solution. Two examples are solved by TA method, the results showed that the proposed technique was effective, accurate, and reliable. Also, for greater reliability, the approxim

     Meerkat Clan Algorithm (MCA) is a nature-based metaheuristic algorithm which imitates the intelligent behavior of the meerkat animal. This paper presents an improvement on the MCA based on a chaotic map and crossover strategy (MCA-CC). These two strategies increase the diversification and intensification of the proposed algorithm and boost the searching ability to find more quality solutions. The 0-1 knapsack problem was solved by the basic MCA and the improved version of this algorithm (MCA-CC). The performance of these algorithms was tested on low and high dimensional problems. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm had overcome the basic algorithm in terms of solution quality, speed a