Forecasting Yangtze River Freight Demand Using A GA-SVM Model

Yangtze River Economic Zone is an economic region that encompasses 2 municipalities and 9 provinces,including Shanghai,Chongqing,Zhejiang,Anhui,Jiangxi,Jiangsu,Hubei,Hunan,Sichuan,Yunnan,and Guizhou.The Party and State propose a strategic decision,with considering the situation,to promote the development of the Yangtze River Economic Zone and provide support for Chinese economy relied on golden waterway,which is favorable not only at present but also in the long run.With the background of developing new normal economy,promoting the development of the Yangtze River Economic Zone is bound to improve foundation and environment of Yangtze River shipping development greatly.Thus further,provide a rare opportunity for progressing the Yangtze River freight shipping.The Yangtze River is the longest river in China.It flows for 6300 kilometers and drains with a basin of 1.8 million square kilometers.In term of the freight transportation,shipping plays an essential role in development along the Yangtze River and has advantages such as large transport capacity,low cost,energy conservation,less pollution and so on.Currently,freight transportation in Yangtze River shipping is in a period to improve industrial status,to enhance functional construction of golden waterway,and to upgrade the shipping service,facing a number of new challenges,for example,contradiction between the supply and demand of shipping transportation.Thusstudy on current situation of the freight transportation in Yangtze River shipping is significant.This paper firstly analyzes present situation based on investigating overseas and domestic research status and points out existing problems in the development progress of freight transportation in Yangtze River shipping.Secondly,under background of developing Yangtze River Economic Zone,figure out main influence factors.They are economic aggregate,industrial structure,domestic and international trade,income and consumption level,fixed investments and shipping supply.Then,through comparing and selecting models,this paper establishes Support Vector Machine based on genetic algorithm(GA-SVM)prediction model and realizes it programmatically from MATLAB.Finally,use GA-SVM model to forecast freight volume of Yangtze River shipping and port handling capacity of ports above designed size in main channel of Yangtze River.Contrasting the results got from GA-SVM with results from traditional Support Vector Machine demonstrates that GA-SVM model has higher accuracy in prediction.According to the results,this paper gives some relevant recommendations on future development of freight transportation in Yangtze River shipping.At present,there are few articles about this field and most of them use Multiple Linear Regression and Index Smoothness as calculation models.GA-SVM model in this paper is an expanding of forecasting freight volume of Yangtze River shipping.The analysis of freight demand in Yangtze River shipping can provide a reference for related plan making,meanwhile,rapid expansion of freight transportation in Yangtze River shipping can stimulate development of Yangtze River Economic Zone.