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Volume 6, Issue 10, Oct 2015, pp. 62-76, Article ID: IJCIET_06_10_006
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Development of The Artificial Neural Network Model For Prediction of Iraqi Expressways
Construction Cost
Cite this Article: Dr. Tareq Abdul Majeed Khaleel. Development of The
Artificial Neural Network Model For Prediction of Iraqi Expressways
Construction Cost. International Journal of Civil Engineering and
Technology, 6(10), 2015, pp. 62-76.
http://www.iaeme.com/IJCIET/issues.asp?JType=IJCIET&VType=6&IType=10
1. INTRODUCTION
Expressways were an expressway especially planned for high-speed traffic, usually
having few if any intersections, limited points of access or exit, and a divider between
lanes for traffic moving in opposite directions.
Conceptual cost estimate is one of the most important activities to be performed
during the project planning phase. It includes the determination of the projects total
costs based only on general early concepts of the project (Kan, 2002). Like all other
planning activities, conceptual cost estimating is a challenging task. This is due to the
availability of limited information at the early stages of a project where many factors
affecting the project costs are still unknown
Major difficulties which arise while conducting cost estimation during the
conceptual phase are lack of preliminary information, lack of database of road works
costs, and lack of up to date cost estimation methods. Additional difficulties arise due
to larger uncertainties as result of engineering solutions, socio-economical, and
environmental issues. Parametric cost estimation or estimation based on historic
database during the conceptual estimate phase is widely used in developed countries.
However, developing countries face difficulties related to the creation of a road work
costs database, which may be used for cost estimation in either the conceptual stage or
the feasibility study of a project cycle.
One of the earliest papers to introduce the benefits and the implementation of
ANN in the civil engineering community is published by (Flood and Kartam,1994).
This research has opened the door for many proposals that suggest ML as the
preferred method to tackle various challenges in the construction industry. Wilmot
and Mei,(2005) introduced an ANN model for expressway construction costs. This
research used the following factors as a base for cost estimation: price of labour, price
of material, price of equipment, pay item quantity, contract duration, contract
location, quarter in which the contract was let, annual bid volume, bid volume
variance, number of plan changes, and changes in standards or specifications. The
main contribution of this work was that it covered all required factors. Nevertheless,
the validation of the proposed method and the data collection process used for training
and testing the results were not fully presented. Furthermore, (Hola and Schabowicz,
2010) developed an ANN model for determining earthworks execution times and
costs. Basically, this model was developed on the basis of a database created from
several studies that were carried out during large-scale earthwork operations on the
construction site of one of the largest chemical plants in Central Europe. However, the
validation of the presented results is not mentioned. Petroutsatou et al.,(2012)
introduced the ANN as a technique for early cost estimation of road tunnel
construction. The data collection strategy of this research was based on structured
questionnaires from different tunnel construction sites. The main drawback of this
research was the ignoring of some of the construction cost factors. Jafarzadeh et
al.,(2014) proposed the ANN method for predicting seismic retrofit construction
costs. This study selected data from 158 earthquake-prone schools. The validation of
this method is not clear. Recently, (Al-Zwainy.,2008) used the multi-layer
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Development of The Artificial Neural Network Model For Prediction of Iraqi Expressways
Construction Cost
Input
Compare with
target
Figure 1 Correction of error using target data (Demuth, 2006)
Sequential versus batch update: When the training data set is large and highly
redundant, sequential mode of back propagation learning could be preferred than
the batch mode of the algorithm.
Maximizing information content: The training data should be strong enough to
maximize the learning rate or the model. There are two ways to form such strong
training information; using data that is having the largest training error, and
using data that is oppositely different the other data used before.
Activation function: Using sigmoid activation function increases the learning
ability of the model. Applying hyperbolic tangent, a nonlinear sigmoid
antisymmetric activation function of sigmoid nonlinearity, is popular in this way.
Learning from hints: Learning from a set of training examples deals with an
unknown input-output mapping function.
Learning rates: Learning rate values are important for the network in learning
process. Neurons with many inputs should have smaller learning rate parameter,
or vice versa.
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V1
V2
V3
V4
V5
V6
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Development of The Artificial Neural Network Model For Prediction of Iraqi Expressways
Construction Cost
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Testing%
Querying%
training
error%
testing
error%
coefficient
correlation(r)%
65
60
60
65
50
70
65
70
70
80
20
20
15
15
30
15
10
12
15
10
15
20
25
20
20
15
25
20
20
10
8.90
7.23
7.85
7.40
7.36
7.56
7.55
6.75
7.18
6.14
9.00
8.40
7.57
7.48
7.44
7.35
7.21
6.98
6.98
5.94
77.35
70.88
76.59
68.64
77.64
79.64
81.26
81.42
81.52
90.30
The effects of using different choices for divisions (i.e. striped, blocked, and
random) were investigated and it was shown in table (2), it can be seen that the
performance of ANNs model was relatively insensitive to the method of division. The
better performance was obtained when the striped division was used, according to
lowest testing (5.94%) and training error (6.14%) coupled with highest correlation
coefficient of validation set (90.30%).
Table 2 Effects of method division on ANNs performance
Data Division%
Training
Testing
Querying
choices
of division
training
error%
testing
error%
coefficient
correlation(r)%
80
80
80
10
10
10
10
10
10
Striped
Blocked
Random
6.14
9.99
9.09
5.94
8.98
8.88
90.30
77.90
75.50
6. SCALING OF DATA
Once the available data have been divided into their subsets, the input and output
variables are pre-processed by scaling them to eliminate their dimension and to ensure
that all variables receive equal attention during training. Scaling has to be
commensurate with the limits of the transfer functions used in the hidden and output
layers (i.e. 1.0 to 1.0 for tanh transfer function and 0.0 to 1.0 for sigmoid transfer
function). The simple linear mapping of the variables, extremes to the neural
networks practical extremes is adopted for scaling, as it is the most commonly used
method, (Shahin, 2003). As part of this method, for each variable x with minimum
and maximum values of xmin and xmax, respectively, the scaled value xn is calculated
as follows:
xn
x x min
x max x min
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(1)
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Development of The Artificial Neural Network Model For Prediction of Iraqi Expressways
Construction Cost
Training Error
8.0%
7.5%
7.0%
6.5%
6.0%
1
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
No. of Nodes
Testing Error
8.0%
7.5%
7.0%
6.5%
6.0%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
No. of Nodes
Correlation Coeff.(r)
97.5%
92.5%
87.5%
82.5%
77.5%
72.5%
1
6 7
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
No. of Nodes
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Momentum
Term
training
error%
testing
error%
coefficient
correlation(r)%
0.1
7.69
5.74
85.44
0.2
7.59
5.74
85.66
0.3
7.49
5.73
86.55
0.4
7.48
5.73
86.85
0.5
7.48
5.74
86.95
0.6
7.38
5.75
86.77
0.7
7.29
5.77
87.99
0.8
7.20
5.60
90.55
0.9
7.54
5.82
88.44
In addition, the effect of the learning rate on the model performance was
investigated (momentum term = 0.8) for Model 2. The results are summarized in table
(4). the optimum value for learning rate is 0.2, which have lowest prediction error,
hence it was used in this model.
Table 4 Effects Learning Rate on ANNs performance (Model 2)
Parameters
Effect
Model No.
(TCE-2)
choices of division
(Striped)
Momentum Term
(0.8)
No. of Nodes
(2)
Transfer function in
hidden layer
(Sigmoid)
Transfer function in
output layer
(Sigmoid)
Learning
Rate
training
error%
testing
error%
coefficient
correlation(r)%
0.1
6.98
6.83
87.97
0.2
7.20
5.60
90.55
0.3
7.42
5.86
88.78
0.4
7.44
5.87
88.76
0.5
7.45
5.91
89.22
0.6
7.49
5.94
89.76
0.7
7.46
6.99
89.57
0.8
7.46
6.99
89.12
0.9
7.65
7.00
89.20
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Development of The Artificial Neural Network Model For Prediction of Iraqi Expressways
Construction Cost
The effects of using different transfer functions (i.e. sigmoid and tanh) were
investigated and it was shown in table (5), it can be seen that the performance of
ANNs model was relatively insensitive to the type of the transfer function. The better
performance was obtained when the tanh transfer function was used for hidden and
output layers, which have lowest prediction error coupled with highest correlation
coefficient (r).
Table 5 Effects of transfer function on ANNs performance (Model 2)
Transfer Function
Hidden
Output
Layer
Layer
Parameters
Effect
Model No.
(TCE-2)
choices of division
(Striped)
No. of Nodes
(2)
Momentum Term
(0.8)
Learning Rate
(0.2)
training
error%
testing
error%
coefficient
correlation(r)%
sigmoid
sigmoid
7.20
5.60
90.55
tanh
tanh
7.88
7.68
88.66
sigmoid
tanh
7.84
7.74
85.53
tanh
sigmoid
7.88
7.58
80.03
X1
X2
X3
X4
X5
X6
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
7
9
8
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TCE-2
j=7
wji (weight from node i in the input layer to node j in the hidden layer)
i=1
i=2
i=3
i=4
i=5
0.433
0.169
-0.300
-0.400
-0.500
0.11
i=6
-0.211
i=1
-0.800
i=6
0.333
j=8
Output
layer
nodes
j=9
i=2
-0.199
i=3
-0.500
i=4
-0.511
i=5
-0.200
wji (weight from node i in the hidden layer to node j in the output layer)
i=7
-0.10
Hidden
layer
threshold j
i=8
-0.835
0.39
Output
layer
threshold j
0.31
Using the connection weights and the threshold levels shown in Table (10), the
predicted of total cost can be expressed as follows:
TCE
1
1 e( 0.310.10 tanh x10.835tanh x2 )
(2)
Where:
X1= {7+ (w7-1*V1)+(w7-2*V2)+(w7-3*V5)+(w7-4*V7)+(w7-5*V7)+(w7-6*V8) }
(3)
(4)
It should be noted that, before using Equation 3 and 4, all input variables (i.e. V1,
V2, V3, V4, V5 and V6), need to be scaled between 0.0 and 1.0 using Equation (1)
and the data ranges in the ANN model training (see Table 7). It should also be noted
that the predicted value of total cost obtained from Equation 6.14 is scaled between
0.0 and 1.0 and in order to obtain the actual value this total cost has to be re-scaled
using Equation (1) and the data ranges in Table (7) The procedure for scaling and
substituting the values of the weights and threshold levels from Table (10), Equations
(2) and (3) and (4) can be rewritten as follows:
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Development of The Artificial Neural Network Model For Prediction of Iraqi Expressways
Construction Cost
TCE
4.11
1 e
1.55
(5)
And
X1={17.088+(0.1*V1)+(0.03*V2)+(-0.01*V3)+(-0.005*V4)+(0.01*V5)+(-0.01*V6)}
(6)
X2={46.8954+(-0.13*V1)+(-0.016*V2)+(-0.11*V3)+(-0.012*V4)+(0.01*V5)+(-0.03*V6)}
(7)
n A E
MAPE
*100% n
i 1 A
(8)
(9)
The results of the comparative study are given in Table (11). The MAPE and
Average Accuracy Percentage generated by ANN model (TCE-2) were found to be
11% and 89% respectively. Therefore it can be concluded that ANN model (Model 2)
shows a good agreement with the actual measurements.
Table 11 Results of the Comparative Study
Description
MAPE
11%
89%
90.0%
81.0%
AA %
R
R2
To assess the validity of the ANNs model for the total cost of expressways project
(TCE), the logarithm of predicted values of TCE are plotted against the logarithm of
measured (observed) values of TCE for validation data set, as shown in figure (8). It
is clear from figure (8). The generalization capability of ANNs techniques using the
validation data set. The coefficient of determination (R 2 ) is (81.0%), therefore it can
be concluded that ANNs model (Model 2) show very good agreement with the actual
measurements.
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RR22=0.81
= 0.8105
5
4
3
2
1
0
0
Figure 8 Comparison of predicted and observed total cost structure work for validation data
Finally, future research directions are suggested for cost estimation in order to
overcome the gaps that have been discussed. These directions are as follows.
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Development of The Artificial Neural Network Model For Prediction of Iraqi Expressways
Construction Cost
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