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Improving the forecasting performance of temporal hierarchies

Author

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  • Evangelos Spiliotis
  • Fotios Petropoulos
  • Vassilios Assimakopoulos

Abstract

Temporal hierarchies have been widely used during the past few years as they are capable to provide more accurate coherent forecasts at different planning horizons. However, they still display some limitations, being mainly subject to the forecasting methods used for generating the base forecasts and the particularities of the examined series. This paper deals with such limitations by considering three different strategies: (i) combining forecasts of multiple methods, (ii) applying bias adjustments and (iii) selectively implementing temporal hierarchies to avoid seasonal shrinkage. The proposed strategies can be applied either separately or simultaneously, being complements to the method considered for reconciling the base forecasts and completely independent from each other. Their effect is evaluated using the monthly series of the M and M3 competitions. The results are very promising, displaying lots of potential for improving the performance of temporal hierarchies, both in terms of accuracy and bias.

Suggested Citation

  • Evangelos Spiliotis & Fotios Petropoulos & Vassilios Assimakopoulos, 2019. "Improving the forecasting performance of temporal hierarchies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-21, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0223422
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223422
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Jeon, Jooyoung & Panagiotelis, Anastasios & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2019. "Probabilistic forecast reconciliation with applications to wind power and electric load," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 279(2), pages 364-379.
    2. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2017. "Forecasting with temporal hierarchies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(1), pages 60-74.
    3. Hyndman, Rob J. & Ahmed, Roman A. & Athanasopoulos, George & Shang, Han Lin, 2011. "Optimal combination forecasts for hierarchical time series," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(9), pages 2579-2589, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Makridakis, Spyros & Spiliotis, Evangelos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2022. "Predicting/hypothesizing the findings of the M5 competition," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 1337-1345.
    2. Fotios Petropoulos & Evangelos Spiliotis, 2021. "The Wisdom of the Data: Getting the Most Out of Univariate Time Series Forecasting," Forecasting, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-20, June.
    3. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    4. Meira, Erick & Cyrino Oliveira, Fernando Luiz & de Menezes, Lilian M., 2022. "Forecasting natural gas consumption using Bagging and modified regularization techniques," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    5. Leprince, Julien & Madsen, Henrik & Møller, Jan Kloppenborg & Zeiler, Wim, 2023. "Hierarchical learning, forecasting coherent spatio-temporal individual and aggregated building loads," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 348(C).
    6. Spiliotis, Evangelos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2020. "Cross-temporal aggregation: Improving the forecast accuracy of hierarchical electricity consumption," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 261(C).
    7. Saeed, Naima & Nguyen, Su & Cullinane, Kevin & Gekara, Victor & Chhetri, Prem, 2023. "Forecasting container freight rates using the Prophet forecasting method," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 86-107.
    8. Makridakis, Spyros & Spiliotis, Evangelos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2022. "M5 accuracy competition: Results, findings, and conclusions," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 1346-1364.
    9. Hollyman, Ross & Petropoulos, Fotios & Tipping, Michael E., 2021. "Understanding forecast reconciliation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(1), pages 149-160.

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