Machine learning model development for predicting road transport GHG emissions in Canada

Prediction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is important to minimise their negative impact on climate change and global warming. In this article, we propose new models based on data mining and supervised machine learning algorithms (regression and classification) for predicting GHG emissions arising from passenger and freight road transport in Canada. Four models are investigated, namely, artificial neural network multilayer perceptron, multiple linear regression, multinomial logistic regression and decision tree models. From the results, it was found that artificial neural network multilayer perceptron model showed better predictive performance over other models. Ensemble technique (Bagging & Boosting) was applied on the developed multilayer perceptron model, which significantly improved the model’s predictive performance.