The prevalence of skin diseases has increased dramatically in recent decades, and they are now considered major chronic diseases globally. People suffer from a broad spectrum of skin diseases, whereas skin tumors are potentially aggressive and life-threatening. However, the severity of skin tumors can be managed (by treatment) if diagnosed early. Health practitioners usually apply manual or computer vision-based tools for skin tumor diagnosis, which may cause misinterpretation of the disease and lead to a longer analysis time. However, cutting-edge technologies such as deep learning using the federated machine learning approach have enabled health practitioners (dermatologists) in diagnosing the type and severity level of skin diseases. Therefore, this study proposes an adaptive federated machine learning-based skin disease model (using an adaptive ensemble convolutional neural network as the core classifier) in a step toward an intelligent dermoscopy device for dermatologists. The proposed federated machine learning-based architecture consists of intelligent local edges (dermoscopy) and a global point (server). The proposed architecture can diagnose the type of disease and continuously improve its accuracy. Experiments were carried out in a simulated environment using the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC) 2019 dataset (dermoscopy images) to test and validate the model’s classification accuracy and adaptability. In the future, this study may lead to the development of a federated machine learning-based (hardware) dermoscopy device to assist dermatologists in skin tumor diagnosis.

Data-driven electrical energy efficiency management is the emerging trend in electrical energy forecasting and management. This fusion of data science, artificial intelligence, and electrical energy management has turned out to be the most precise and robust energy management solution. The Smart Energy Informatics Lab (SEIL) of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) conducted an experimental study in 2019 to collect massive data on university campus energy consumption. The comprehensive comparative study preparatory to the recommendation of the best candidate out of 24 machine learning algorithms on the SEIL dataset is presented in this work. In this research work, an exhaustive parametric and empirical comparative study is conducted on the SEIL dataset for the recommendation of the optimal machine learning algorithm. The simulation results established the findings that Bagged Trees, Fine Trees, and Medium Trees are, respectively, the best-, second-best-, and third-best-performing algorithms in terms of efficacy. On the contrary, a reverse ranking is observed in terms of efficiency. This is grounded in the fact that Bagged Trees is most effective algorithm for the said application and Medium Trees is the most efficient one. Likewise, Fine Trees has the optimum tradeoff between efficacy and efficiency.

Semantic segmentation for accurate visual perception is a critical task in computer vision. In principle, the automatic classification of dynamic visual scenes using predefined object classes remains unresolved. The challenging problems of learning deep convolution neural networks, specifically ResNet-based DeepLabV3+ (the most recent version), are threefold. The problems arise due to (1) biased centric exploitations of filter masks, (2) lower representational power of residual networks due to identity shortcuts, and (3) a loss of spatial relationship by using per-pixel primitives. To solve these problems, we present a proficient approach based on DeepLabV3+, along with an added evaluation metric, namely, Unified DeepLabV3+ and $S^{3}core$, respectively. The presented unified version reduced the effect of biased exploitations via additional dilated convolution layers with customized dilation rates. We further tackled the problem of representational power by introducing non-linear group normalization shortcuts to solve the focused problem of semi-dark images. Meanwhile, to keep track of the spatial relationships in terms of the global and local contexts, geometrically bunched pixel cues were used. We accumulated all the proposed variants of DeepLabV3+ to propose Unified DeepLabV3+ for accurate visual decisions. Finally, the proposed $S^{3}core$ evaluation metric was based on the weighted combination of three different accuracy measures, i.e., the pixel accuracy, IoU (intersection over union), and Mean BFScore, as robust identification criteria. Extensive experimental analysis performed over a CamVid dataset confirmed the applicability of the proposed solution for autonomous vehicles and robotics for outdoor settings. The experimental analysis showed that the proposed Unified DeepLabV3+ outperformed DeepLabV3+ by a margin of 3% in terms of the class-wise pixel accuracy, along with a higher $S^{3}core$, depicting the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

The Educational Data Mining (EDM) is a very vigorous area of Data Mining (DM), and it is helpful in predicting the performance of students. Student performance prediction is not only important for the student but also helpful for academic organization to detect the causes of success and failures of students. Furthermore, the features selected through the students’ performance prediction models helps in developing action plans for academic welfare. Feature selection can increase the prediction accuracy of the prediction model. In student performance prediction model, where every feature is very important, as a neglection of any important feature can cause the wrong development of academic action plans. Moreover, the feature selection is a very important step in the development of student performance prediction models. There are different types of feature selection algorithms. In this paper, Fast Correlation-Based Filter (FCBF) is selected as a feature selection algorithm. This paper is a step on the way to identifying the factors affecting the academic performance of the students. In this paper performance of FCBF is being evaluated on three different student’s datasets. The performance of FCBF is detected well on a student dataset with greater no of features.

Multispectral Image Analysis (MIA) is an exciting area of research and famous due to its utilization in geo monitoring, such as environmental change detection and region classification. Currently, many other areas are also emerging and are utilizing the multispectral imagery for improving the existing business processes and ensuring the reliability in the existing business methods. However, the process of generating and analyzing multispectral data needs more sophisticated techniques and methods. Also, the multispectral data possesses some temporal and structural inconsistencies, which make the existing multispectral analysis a more challenging task. Therefore, this study surveys the practical implication and possible issues in multispectral image analysis. For that reason, this study aims to investigate the two simple research questions and follow a structured analysis approach to achieve the research objectives. The rest of the paper is structured as; Section II briefly explains the systematic methodology adopted for this survey. Section III is relevant to research finding in response to the RQ1 and RQ2. Finally, Section IV presents the conclusion of this study. In future work, we will sharpen this study towards Skin Disease Analysis using Multispectral Imagery.

Wind-waves exhibit variations both in shape and steepness, and their asymmetrical nature is a well-known feature. One of the important characteristics of the sea surface is the front-back asymmetry of wind-wave crests. The wind-wave conditions on the surface of the sea constitute a sea state, which is listed as an essential climate variable by the Global Climate Observing System and is considered a critical factor for structural safety and optimal operations of offshore oil and gas platforms. Methods such as statistical representations of sensor-based wave parameters observations and numerical modeling are used to classify sea states. However, for offshore structures such as oil and gas platforms, these methods induce high capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX), along with extensive computational power and time requirements. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a novel, low-cost deep learning-based sea state classification model using visual-range sea images. Firstly, a novel visual-range sea state image dataset was designed and developed for this purpose. The dataset consists of 100,800 images covering four sea states. The dataset was then benchmarked on state-of-the-art deep learning image classification models. The highest classification accuracy of 81.8% was yielded by NASNet-Mobile. Secondly, a novel sea state classification model was proposed. The model took design inspiration from GoogLeNet, which was identified as the optimal reference model for sea state classification. Systematic changes in GoogLeNet’s inception block were proposed, which resulted in an 8.5% overall classification accuracy improvement in comparison with NASNet-Mobile and a 7% improvement from the reference model (i.e., GoogLeNet). Additionally, the proposed model took 26% less training time, and its per-image classification time remains competitive.