A Design of Genetic Fog Occurrence Forecasting System by Using
LVQ Network
Y. Mitsukura, M. Fukumi and N. Akamatsu
Faculty of Engineering
University of Tokushima
ABSTRACT
A transportation development in recent years is
quite remarkable. However, poor visibility often cause
a n accident. Therefore, it i s very important t o fore-
cast a fog occurrence. I n this paper, we propose a
scheme t o forecast a fog occurrence b3 using the Learn-
ing Vector Quantization (LVQ) and a Genetic Algo-
rithm (GA). This scheme forecasts the fog occurrence
by the weather data which are provided f i o m the Japan
Meteorological Agency. First, the provided data for-
mation are shown. Next, the prediction scheme is
described in detail. I n this method, input attributes
f o r a L V Q network are selected by real-coded G A t o
improve forecast accuracy. firthermore, a partial se-
lection processing in the real-coded G A improves its
convergence properties. Finally, in order t o show the
eflectiveness of the proposed prediction scheme, com-
puter simulations are performed.
1 Introduction
In this paper, we propose a new method to pre-
dict a fog occurrence by using the Learning Vector
Quantization (LVQ)[l] - [3] and a Genetic Algorithm
(GA)[4],[5]. The objection in this paper is to predict
the fog occurrence precisely by using the LVQ method
and the GA.
The LVQ methods have been utilized in many fields
of engineering researches [1]-[3].However all input at-
tributes are used to determine a winner unit. It is not
very good for a high recognition accuracy and a rule
generation from the LVQ network. Therefore in this
paper, a method to select the input attributes using
the real coded GA is presented. This method leads
to the rule generation from the LVQ network by pro-
ducing a small-sized network [8]. Relationships among
the input attributes can be defined in a resulting LVQ
network obtained using the real coded GA.
The data were provided from the Japan Meteoro-
logical Agency and there is the one for 12 years( 1984-
1995). It consists of the data measured every thirty-
minutes. The data consist of (year) (month) (day)
(time) (atmospheric pressure) (tempreture) (dew-
point) ( wind direction ) (wind velocity) (maximum
instantaneous wind velocity) ( change of the wind di-
rection 1,2) (visibility) (weather) (cloud information
0-7803-6583-6/001$10.00 0 2000 IEEE
3678
from 1st layer to 4th layer) in order. Here, the atmo-
spheric pressure is one based on the international stan-
dard atmosphere. The tempreture means the ground
temperature. The dew-point means “how much de-
grees is vapor saturated in when temperature is low
under an atmospheric pressure ?”. The wind direc-
tions are defined as follovis:
The angle of 90: the wind is blowing from the east to
the west.
The angle of 180: the wind is blowing from the south
to the north.
The angle of 270: the wind is blowing from the west
to the east.
And also, the maximum instantaneous wind velocity
is reported only when an instantaneous wind velocity
more than 10 knots compared with the average of the
wind velocity is observed for ten minutes. Further-
more, the visibility is reported as “9999” when it has
more than 10000.
For example, the data of January 1, 1984, 0:O a.m.
and 0:30 a.m. are shown as follows:
age, month, day, time, atmospheric pressure, tempre-
ture, dew-point, derection of the wind, wind velocity,
max instantaneous wind velocity, wind change 1, wind
change 2, visibility, weather, cloud information from
1st layer, cloud information from 2nd layer, cloud in-
formation from 3rd layer., cloud information from 4th
layer
1984, 1, 1, 0.0, 1009, -2.0, -3.0, 180, 5, -1, -1 -1, 9999,
21, 0 2 7, 0 4 25, -1 -1-I., -1 -1 -1, 1
1984, 1, 1, 0.5, 1018, -2.0, -3.0, -1, -1, -1, -1 -1, 30, 26,
0 2 7, 0 4 25, -1 -1 -1,-1 -1-1, 1
where “-1” denotes non-data.
Consider the case of the upper data which are mea-
sured at 0 a.m. on January l, 1984. The atmospheric
pressure is 1009 hPa, the tempreture is -2 degrees and
dew-point is -3 degrees. The wind derection is the an-
gle of 180. This means the wind is blowing from the
south to the north. Fur1;hermore “5” means the wind
blowing at the speed of 5 meters per second. The next
“-1” is the maximum instantaneous wind velocity and
is not measured. In the same way, two “-1” means that
the wind change is not observed. The visibility “9999”
means that it is more than 10000 meters. The present
weather is “21”, which means that it is raining. Fur-
thermore, when there are clouds in different heights,
cloud information of the first layer, the second layer,
the third layer and the fourth layer is displayed in or-
der from the lower layer. The fog occurrence condition
are defined as following:
1. The distance of visibility is 0-1000 meters
2. The weather signal is from 40 to 49.
In order to show the effectiveness of the proposed
I Output layer

scheme, computer simulations are done by using these

data.
2 LVQ network
The object of the LVQ learning proposed by Koho-
nen is to perform pattern classification of input data.
For this input pattern classification, neuron weights
are formed by a supervised competitive learning. The
structure of a LVQ network is shown in Fig.1. Input layer
The LVQ network has an input layer and an out-
put layer. The input and the output layers are fully-
connected by weight vectors. Here, LVQ algorithms
are shown as follows: x1 x2 x3 x4 X”
1. Random values are set as initial weight values. Fig.1 The structure of the LVQ network.
2. An input vector{X = ( z I , z p , ...,.,)}is set in the
3 Inputs selection of the LVQ network
input layer.
by GA
3. The distance between the weight vector of neuron In this paper, inputs to the LVQ network are se-
j and the input vector is calculated as follows: lected by using real cording GA. The procedure of GA
is shown as follows:

Step1 An initial uniform random number ni in [0,1] is

assigned to all genes on chromosomes. These ran-
where, wji denotes the weight connecting the i-th dom numbers (nl,...,n N )are used in the distance
neuron in an input layer to the j-th neuron in the calculation as follows:
output layer.
I N
4. The weight vector which has the smallest d j
wji
is selected, and is renewed according to the fol-
lowing equation.

wji(k) + a(.* - wji)

This is an improved version of the equation (1).

: The result of recognition is true Step2 Calculation of the fitness function { f k , ~ } , where
wji(k+l) = k , 1 denotes the 1-th individual on the k-th gener-
w j i ( k ) - Q ( Z ~- w j i ) ation.

: The result of recognition is false
where cr denotes a learning late and k is a time
index.
This algorithm is called the LVQ1. By the way, in
addition to this LVQ1, there are 2 methods called the
LVQ2 and the LVQ3[1] - [3]. As for the details, the
LVQ2 and the LVQ3 are omitted. In this paper, we ap-
plied the method combining the LVQl with the LVQ3
to the fog occurrence forecasting.
Step3 Individuals are rearranged in turn on the basis of
their recognition rates.
Step4 Take the average of the values of genes at the
same position on chromosomes in the half of in-
dividuals which has a high recognition rate.
Step5 Substitute “0” for the gene which has the small
value in the average calculated in StepS.
Step6 Reproduction of the next generation’s population
through selection, crossover and mutation.

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In Stepl, individuals have the same number of at-
tributes. In Step2, we use the following fitness func-
tion:
fk,l = A/(the number of individuals)
+B/(the number of individuals)
where A is the ranking number which is assigned in
turn by high recognition rate in the LVQ network and
B is the ranking number which is assigned by the num-
ber of non “0” in the chromosome of an individual in
GA. In Step3 and Step4, while a generation cycle is
repeated, the high average are assigned to attributes
(chromosomes) which is necessary for the recognition.
In Step5, the attribute which isn’t necessary for the
recognition can be removed. In Step6, the crossover is
done according to the reference [6],[7]and the muta-
tion is done as regeneration of the removed attributes.
That is, if the value of a gene is not “O”, then an
uniform random number ni in [0,1]is assigned to it.
3.1 Partial Selection
Average of the chromosome information of the in-
dividual who have high fitness value is taken by the
attribute.
where c denotes a gene index, that is, the information
of an attribute. Ng is the maximum number of genera-
tions decided in advance. Let ak,c,min is the minimum
a k , c . Then c (attribute) in the next generation is set
to 0.
In GA, the individual of the next generation are de-
cided by the elite strategy until the Ng/2 generation.
After the N g / 2 generation, the individual is generated
according to the Gaussian deisribution N ( U ~ , a2).
That is, the probability which a gene value is within
( a k , c , - 0,a k , c , + 0)is 68,2%, ( a k , c , - 20,ak,c, + 20)
+
is 95.5% and CL^,^,, - 3 a , a k , c n 30) is 99.7%. Here,
0 is the standard deviation here.
From these procedure, the priority of an attribute
can be obtained by using a real-coded GA in this pa-
per. Then, inputs in consideration of the attribute
priority rate can be chosen. Therefore, it becomes pos-
sible to get a higher recognition rate than conventional
LVQ method. Furthermore, the number of inputs can
be reduced by selecting the attribute which isn’t nec-
essary for the recognition. This deduce a memory ca-
pacity.
4 Computer simulations
In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed
scheme, computer simulations were done.
The learning data are made over into new data. In
this case, the number of the “fog” data and that of
“non-fog” are the same. Furthermore, the new term
(tempreture - dew-point) is added to the input at-
tributes.
For the purpose of comparison, we applied the
Back-Propagation (BP) method as a conventional one
to a fully-connected three layered network (NN). The
parameters of NN are shown in the following.
The number of layers : 3
(3)
The number of units in the input layer : 26 x 6
(Maximum)
The number of units in the hidden layer : 20
The number of units in the output layer : 2
And also, we use a method combining the LVQl with
the LVQ3. The parameters of (LVQl+LVQ3) are
shown in the following.
The number of units in the input layer : 26 x 6
(Maximum)
The number of units in the output layer : 20
Finally, we apply the proposed scheme to the fog oc-
currence forecast, in which GA performs a kind of fea-
ture selection on input attributes. The parameters of
GA are shown in the following.
(4) The number of individuals : 40
The number of generations : 40
The probability of mutation : 0.05
The results of all the methods are shown in Table 1,
Table 2 and Table 3.
Table 1 Results obtained using the B P method.
7-
~,,
7Recognitionaccur;icyforfogI
Recognition accuracy for non-fog
Table 2 Results obtained using the (LVQ1 and
LVQ3) method.
I L V U l t LVQ3 I
I
Recognition accuracy or og
Table 3 Results obtained using the proposed
method.
From these results, the proposed scheme works better
than the other methods.
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 5 Conclusions
In this paper, we propose a new method to predict a
fog occurrence by using a LVQ and a GA. The data
were provided from the Japan Meteorological Agency
and there is the one for 12 years. However, these data
contains an enormous amount of information. In this
paper, only inputs which are necessary for the predic-
tion are chosen by using a GA. Then, the time for the
fog occurrence forecast is shortened. Furthermore, in
order to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme,
we performed a computer simulation for the fog occur-
rence forecasting.
The features of the proposed scheme are summa-
rized as follows:
0 The proposed method can make a small-sized sys-
tem. Therefore, the time for the fog occurrence
forecast is shortened.
0 The suitable LVQ network inputs can be obtained
by using a GA.
0 The importance of the attributes and the rela-
tionship among them can be obtained by using
Real-corded GA.
0 Recognition accuracy close to 100 percent can be
obtained.
0 Rule generation from a small-sized network would
be performed.

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