Abstract
Forecasts of the effort or delivery date can play an important role in managing software projects, but the estimates provided by development teams are often inaccurate and time-consuming to produce. This is not surprising given the uncertainty that underlies this activity. This work studies the use of Monte Carlo simulations for generating forecasts based on project historical data. We have designed and run experiments comparing these forecasts against what happened in practice and to estimates provided by developers, when available. Comparisons were made based on the mean magnitude of relative error (MMRE). We did also analyze how the forecasting accuracy varies with the amount of work to be forecasted and the amount of historical data used. To minimize the requirements on input data, delivery date forecasts for a set of user stories were computed based on takt time of past stories (time elapsed between the completion of consecutive stories); effort forecasts were computed based on full-time equivalent (FTE) hours allocated to the implementation of past stories. The MMRE of delivery date forecasting was 32% in a set of 10 runs (for different projects) of Monte Carlo simulation based on takt time. The MMRE of effort forecasting was 20% in a set of 5 runs of Monte Carlo simulation based on FTE allocation, much smaller than the MMRE of 134% of developers' estimates. A better forecasting accuracy was obtained when the number of historical data points was 20 or higher. These results suggest that Monte Carlo simulations may be used in practice for delivery date and effort forecasting in agile projects, after a few initial sprints. © 2021 ACM.

Abstract
Sustainable agricultural production requires a controlled usage of water, nutrients, and minerals from the environment. Different strategies of plant irrigation are being studied to control the quantity and quality balance of the fruits. Regarding efficient irrigation, particularly in deficit irrigation strategies, it is essential to act according to water stress status in the plant. For example, in the vine, to improve the quality of the grapes, the plants are deprived of water until they reach particular water stress before re-watered in specified phenological stages. The water status inside the plant is estimated by measuring either the Leaf Potential during the Predawn or soil water potential, along with the root zones. Measuring soil water potential has the advantage of being independent of diurnal atmospheric variations. However, this method has many logistic problems, making it very hard to apply along all the yard, especially the big ones. In this study, the Predawn Leaf Water Potential (PLWP) is daily predicted by Machine Learning models using data such as grapes variety, soil characteristics, irrigation schedules, and meteorological data. The benefits of these techniques are the reduction of the manual work of measuring PLWP and the capacity to implement those models on a larger scale by predicting PLWP up to 7 days which should enhance the ability to optimize the irrigation plan while the quantity and quality of the crop are under control.

Abstract

Abstract
Process Mining offers a powerful framework for uncovering, analyzing, and optimizing real-world business processes. Petri nets provide a versatile means of modeling process behavior. However, traditional methods often struggle to effectively compare complex Petri nets, hindering their potential for process enhancement. To address this challenge, we introduce PetriNet2Vec, an unsupervised methodology inspired by Doc2Vec. This approach converts Petri nets into embedding vectors, facilitating the comparison, clustering, and classification of process models. We validated our approach using the PDC Dataset, comprising 96 diverse Petri net models. The results demonstrate that PetriNet2Vec effectively captures the structural properties of process models, enabling accurate process classification and efficient process retrieval. Specifically, our findings highlight the utility of the learned embeddings in two key downstream tasks: process classification and process retrieval. In process classification, the embeddings allowed for accurate categorization of process models based on their structural properties. In process retrieval, the embeddings enabled efficient retrieval of similar process models using cosine distance. These results demonstrate the potential of PetriNet2Vec to significantly enhance process mining capabilities.

Abstract
This study focuses on the assessment of ground vibrations due to pile driving activities. Given the likelihood of excessive vibration due to the driving process, it is imperative to predict vibration levels during the design phase. The primary goal of this work is to integrate machine learning techniques, specifically Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) for real-time vibration prediction. The training dataset was generated using a validated numerical model and the trained models were validated based on experimental results. This validation process highlights the efficiency and accuracy of Extreme Gradient Boosting in predicting the-free-field response of the ground.