Enhanced Forecasting Accuracy of Fuzzy Time Series Model Based on Combined Fuzzy C-Mean Clustering with Particle Swam Optimization

Over the past 25 years, numerous fuzzy time series forecasting models have been proposed to deal the complex and uncertain problems. The main factors that affect the forecasting results of these models are partition universe of discourse, creation of fuzzy relationship groups and defuzzification of forecasting output values. So, this study presents a hybrid fuzzy time series forecasting model combined particle swarm optimization (PSO) and fuzzy C-means clustering (FCM) for solving issues above. The FCM clustering is used to divide the historical data into initial intervals with unequal size. After generating interval, the historical data is fuzzified into fuzzy sets with the aim to serve for establishing fuzzy relationship groups according to chronological order. Then the information obtained from the fuzzy relationship groups can be used to calculate forecasted value based on a new defuzzification technique. In addition, in order to enhance forecasting accuracy, the PSO algorithm is used for finding optimum interval lengths in the universe of discourse. The proposed model is applied to forecast three well-known numerical datasets (enrolments data of the University of Alabama, the Taiwan futures exchange —TAIFEX data and yearly deaths in car road accidents in Belgium). These datasets are also examined by using some other forecasting models available in the literature. The forecasting results obtained from the proposed model are compared to those produced by the other models. It is observed that the proposed model achieves higher forecasting accuracy than its counterparts for both first—order and high—order fuzzy logical relationship.