Prediction of China’s Sulfur Dioxide Emissions by Discrete Grey Model with Fractional Order Generation Operators

Sulfur dioxide is an important source of atmospheric pollution. Many countries are developing policies to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. In this paper, a novel prediction model is proposed, which could be used to forecast sulfur dioxide emissions. To improve the modeling procedure, fractional order accumulating generation operator and fractional order reducing generation operator are introduced. Based on fractional order operators, a discrete grey model with fractional operators is developed, which also makes use of genetic algorithms to optimize the modeling parameter . The improved performance of the model is demonstrated via comparison studies with other grey models. The model is then used to predict China’s sulfur dioxide emissions. The forecast result shows that the amount of sulfur dioxide emissions is steadily decreasing and the policies of sulfur dioxide reduction in China are effective. According to the current trend, by 2020, the value of China’s sulfur dioxide emissions will be only 86.843% of emissions in 2015. Fractional order generation operators can be used to develop other fractional order system models.