Deep learning has substantially advanced the state of the art in computer vision, natural language processing, and other fields. The paper examines the potential of deep learning for exchange rate forecasting. We systematically compare long short-term memory networks and gated recurrent units to traditional recurrent network architectures as well as feedforward networks in terms of their directional forecasting accuracy and the profitability of trading model predictions. Empirical results indicate the suitability of deep networks for exchange rate forecasting in general but also evidence the difficulty of implementing and tuning corresponding architectures. Especially with regard to trading profit, a simpler neural network may perform as well as if not better than a more complex deep neural network.

The growing field of humanitarian operations is driven by frequent events of disasters seen in the world today. Within this field, Operations Research (OR) plays a critical role in alleviating the suffering of victims that are impacted by disasters. This paper focuses on the branch of a well-known OR problem, known as the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), within the selected scope of humanitarian operations. A total of 123 papers of the last decade are reviewed and classified under the humanitarian operations of supply and delivery, evacuation as well as rescue operations. Besides specific disaster management phases and disaster types, various modelling challenges are highlighted, hinting towards a richer and more complex VRP seen under selected model characteristic classifications. Furthermore, established solution approaches, including hybrid solutions, are highlighted and classified, discussing how they are applied in the context of these humanitarian operations. The inclusion of a machine learning solution approach under the same classification is proposed. Finally, the trend and future outlook of VRP for the suggested humanitarian operations are discussed and highlighted.

In multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) research, the criteria weights are crucial components that significantly impact the results. Many researchers have proposed numerous methods to establish the weights of the criterion. This paper provides a modified technique, the fuzzy method based on the removal effects of criteria (MEREC) by modifying the normalization technique and enhancing the logarithm function used to assess the entire performance of alternatives in the weighting process. Since MCDM problems intrinsically are ambiguous or complex, fuzzy theory is used to interpret the linguistic phrases into triangular fuzzy numbers. The comparative analyses were conducted through the case study of staff performance appraisal at a Malaysian academic institution and the simulation-based study is used to validate the effectiveness and stability of the presented method. The results of the fuzzy MEREC are compared with those from a few different objective weighting techniques based on the correlation coefficients, outlier tests and central processing unit (CPU) time. The results of the comparative analyses demonstrate that fuzzy MEREC weights are verified as the correlation coefficient values are consistent throughout the study. Furthermore, the simulation-based study demonstrates that even in the presence of outliers in the collection of alternatives, fuzzy MEREC is able to offer consistent weights for the criterion. The fuzzy MEREC also requires less CPU time compared to the existing MEREC techniques. Hence, the modified method is a suitable alternative and efficient for computing the objective criteria weights in the MCDM problems.

This paper considers solving a biobjective urban transit routing problem with a genetic algorithm approach. The objectives are to minimize the passengers’ and operators’ costs where the quality of the route sets is evaluated by a set of parameters. The proposed algorithm employs an adding-node procedure which helps in converting an infeasible solution to a feasible solution. A simple yet effective route crossover operator is proposed by utilizing a set of feasibility criteria to reduce the possibility of producing an infeasible network. The computational results from Mandl’s benchmark problems are compared with other published results in the literature and the computational experiments show that the proposed algorithm performs better than the previous best published results in most cases.