Monte Carlo Optimization for Sliding Window Size in Dixon Quality Control of Environmental Monitoring Time Series Data

Outliers are often present in large datasets of water quality monitoring time series data. A method of combining the sliding window technique with Dixon detection criterion for the automatic detection of outliers in time series data is limited by the empirical determination of sliding window sizes. The scientific determination of the optimal sliding window size is very meaningful research work. This paper presents a new Monte Carlo Search Method (MCSM) based on random sampling to optimize the size of the sliding window, which fully takes advantage of computers and statistics. The MCSM was applied in a case study to automatic monitoring data of water quality factors in order to test its validity and usefulness. The results of comparing the accuracy and efficiency of the MCSM show that the new method in this paper is scientific and effective. The experimental results show that, at different sample sizes, the average accuracy is between 58.70% and 75.75%, and the average computation time increase is between 17.09% and 45.53%. In the era of big data in environmental monitoring, the proposed new methods can meet the required accuracy of outlier detection and improve the efficiency of calculation.