A new approach based on artificial neural networks for high order multivariate fuzzy time series

Fuzzy time series methods have been recently becoming very popular in forecasting. These methods can be categorized into two subclasses that are univariate and multivariate approaches. It is a known fact that real time series data can actually be affected by many factors. In this case, the using multivariate fuzzy time series forecasting model can be more reasonable in order to get more accurate forecasts. To obtain fuzzy forecasts when multivariate fuzzy time series approach is adopted, the most applied method is using tables of fuzzy relations. However, employing this method is a computationally though task. In this study, we introduce a new method that does not require using fuzzy logic relation tables in order to determine fuzzy relationships. Instead, a feed forward artificial neural network is employed to determine fuzzy relationships. The proposed method is applied to the time series data of the total number of annual car road accidents casualties in Belgium from 1974 to 2004 and a comparison is made between our proposed method and the methods proposed by Jilani and Burney [Jilani, T. A., & Burney, S. M. A. (2008). Multivariate stochastic fuzzy forecasting models. Expert Systems with Applications, 35, 691-700] and Lee et al. [Lee, L.-W., Wang, L.-H., Chen, S.-M., & Leu, Y.-H. (2006). Handling forecasting problems based on two factors high order fuzzy time series. IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, 14, 468-477]. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.