Time series forecasting is fundamental for various use cases in different domains such as energy systems and economics. Creating a forecasting model for a specific use case requires an iterative and complex design process. The typical design process includes five sections (1) data preprocessing, (2) feature engineering, (3) hyperparameter optimization, (4) forecasting method selection, and (5) forecast ensembling, which are commonly organized in a pipeline structure. One promising approach to handle the ever‐growing demand for time series forecasts is automating this design process. The article, thus, reviews existing literature on automated time series forecasting pipelines and analyzes how the design process of forecasting models is currently automated. Thereby, we consider both automated machine learning (AutoML) and automated statistical forecasting methods in a single forecasting pipeline. For this purpose, we first present and compare the identified automation methods for each pipeline section. Second, we analyze these automation methods regarding their interaction, combination, and coverage of the five pipeline sections. For both, we discuss the reviewed literature that contributes toward automating the design process, identify problems, give recommendations, and suggest future research. This review reveals that the majority of the reviewed literature only covers two or three of the five pipeline sections. We conclude that future research has to holistically consider the automation of the forecasting pipeline to enable the large‐scale application of time series forecasting.This article is categorized under: Technologies > Machine Learning Technologies > Prediction Algorithmic Development > Spatial and Temporal Data Mining
The increasing utilisation of demand-controlled ventilation strategies leads to the frequent operation of fans under part-load conditions. To accurately predict the energy demand of a ventilation system with a fan array in the early design stages, models that calculate reliable results across the whole operating range are required. We present the comparison of a polynomial and a machine learning approach through support vector regression (SVR) to predict the fan performance over a wide range of typical operating points. For fitting and validation, we use experimental data. We investigate the extrapolation performance of both approaches. The SVR model achieves a slightly better representation of the experimental data with a lower error, especially when only sparse data are available. Both approaches yield similar results when the evaluation is conducted within the experimentally captured domain but deviates outside the domain. At operating points that are far from the experimentally captured domain, the polynomial models yield fan efficiencies that are physically plausible, while the SVR models drastically overpredict the fan efficiency. To rate the influence of such deviations towards modelling the actual energy demand, both approaches are applied to an operation simulation of a simplified office building. Both approaches yield similar results despite differing extrapolation capabilities.