A Model of Coal Mine Water Disaster Emergency

Logistics Risk Assessment Based on AHP and BP Neural

Network

Jinfeng Wang, Huake Zhong, and Lijie Feng

Institute of Management Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou,

Henan Province, China

Abstract. According to needs of rescue and relief work in coal mine water
disaster, the article expounds the significance of coal mine water disaster
emergency logistics risk assessment, analyses the characteristics of traditional
risk assessment methods and the advantages of neural network method in the
evaluation problems, and puts forward the idea that combining the analytic
hierarchy process (AHP) with the BP neural network vertically. A set of coal
mine water disaster emergency logistics risk assessment index system is
designed, and a model for coal mine water disaster emergency logistics risk
assessment based on AHP and BP neural network is set up. Besides, the article
introduces the implementation process of the model, and verifies the feasibility
of the model through demonstration analysis in the MATLAB software
platform.

Keywords: Coal mine water disaster emergency logistics Risk assessment, BP

neural network, Analytic hierarchy process.

1 Introduction

The coal field hydrogeological conditions are very complex in China, and coal mine
water disasters occur frequently. Whether the rescue and relief work in coal mine
water disasters succeed or not depends not only on the scientific nature of rescue
plans, the timeliness of the rescue operation, but also the effectiveness of the
emergency logistics activities. Due to the nature of burstiness, uncertainty and
urgency of itself, the emergency logistics’ operation is subject to various risk factors.
If the risk factors can’t be effectively controlled, it will affect the smooth operation of
emergency logistics, and even miss the best rescue opportunity. Therefore, the risk
management of emergency logistics in the process of coal mine water disaster rescues
is very important. While comprehensive, objective and accurate risk assessment is the
key link of risk management, it is of great significance to establish an appropriate risk
assessment model.
Currently, research on coal mine water disaster emergency logistics risk assessment
is not too much. Traditional methods such as subjective evaluation method, analytic

Y. Zhang (Ed.): Future Communication, Computing, Control and Management, LNEE 142, pp. 535–542.
springerlink.com © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
536 J. Wang, H. Zhong, and L. Feng

hierarchy process (AHP), fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, and grey

evaluation method etc, are usually adopted in the study and practice activities. These
methods are practical and simple to operate, but their analysis of evaluation objects
may have some lag and be affected by the randomness in the evaluation process
and subjectivity. Using these methods for the evaluation alone may influence
the objectivity and accuracy of evaluation results. Therefore, we should consider
introducing more objective evaluation method to replace or combine with the
traditional method.

2 Combination Mechanism of AHP and BP Neural Network

The BP neural network is a kind of error back propagation multi-level and feed-
forward network. It has the nature of self-study and self-organizing and strong
nonlinear function approximation ability. The network needs a certain amount of
sample data for training in order to determine the proper training, weights and
threshold. The common way of data acquisition is that: Experts firstly estimate the
weight of every index directly according to experience and reasoning, and then score
to every index and obtain the comprehensive evaluation result by calculating the
weighted index value. This method has strong subjective and randomness, and is
difficult to guarantee the accuracy of the result, which may affect the network’s
training effect. AHP is a systematic, hierarchical analysis method which combines
qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis. It can quantify the importance of
multiple variables, and is particularly effective to determining the index weight.
Therefore, we can develop a new method that combines AHP with BP Neural
Network: BP neural network is taken as the main body of the risk assessment model,
and AHP is used to determine the index weight.

3 Constructing the Risk Assessment Model

According to the analysis above, we construct a coal mine water disaster emergency
logistics risk assessment model based on the AHP and the BP neural network, as
shown in Figure1.
First of all, analyze the risk factors which affect the coal mine water disaster
emergency logistics and determine the weights of the evaluation indexes using AHP.
Then, select several typical coal mine water disaster emergency logistics cases in a
certain area. The experts give the score of each risk assessment index and calculate
the evaluation results. The obtained results data is taken as BP neural network’s
training and test samples. When the training work is completed, save network
parameters. The customers just need to input the evaluation indexes scores, and the
mode will output more relatively objective risk assessment results.
 A Model of Coal Mine Water Disaster Emergency Logistics Risk Assessment 537

Fig. 1. Coal mine water disaster emergency logistics risk assessment model

3.1 Determining the Weights of Evaluation Indexes Using AHP

(1) Constructing hierarchical structure model

Fig. 2. Coal mine water disaster emergency logistics risk evaluation index system
538 J. Wang, H. Zhong, and L. Feng

Experts group related in coal mine water disaster emergency logistics field screen
the risk factors through several rounds of scoring, and then select the risk factors
which have greater influence on coal mine water disaster emergency logistics as the
evaluation indexes. Finally, establish the hierarchy model of the risk assessment
indexes applying AHP, as shown in Figure 2.
(2) Constructing judgment matrix and determining the index weigh
Experts group reach an agreement on the relative importance of each index after
depth analysis of the risk factors, and use the 1 ~ 9 scale method to establish the
judgment matrix of each layer. Then calculate respectively the λ max of each judgment
matrix and the corresponding eigenvectors of the λ max, as shown in Table 1-5.
Finally, normalize the eigenvectors and get all the weights of risk assessment indexes,
as shown in Table 6. Upon examination, every judge matrix CR is less than 0.10, in
other words, it has been through the consistency check.

Table 1. Rule layer judgment matrix A-B

A B1 B2 B3 B4 W (weight)
B1 1 1/2 2 3 0.278
B2 2 1 3 4 0.467
B3 1/2 1/3 1 2 0.160
B4 1/3 1/4 1/2 1 0.095
Note: λ max =4.031, CR=0.011 ＜0.10.
Table 2. Index layer judgment matrix B1-C Table 3. Index layer judgment matrix B2-C

B1 C11 C12 C13 C14 W B2 C21 C22 C23 C24 W

C11 1 2 3 4 0.470 C21 1 1/3 1/2 2 0.157
C12 1/2 1 2 3 0.280 C22 3 1 2 5 0.483
C13 1/3 1/2 1 1/2 0.114 C23 2 1/3 1 3 0.272
C14 1/4 1/3 2 1 0.136 C24 1/2 1/5 1/3 1 0.088
Note: λ max =4.153, CR=0.057 0.10. ＜ Note: λ max =4.015, CR=0.006 0.10. ＜
Table 4. Index layer judgment matrix B3-C Table 5. Index layer judgment matrix B4-C

B3 C31 C32 C33 C34 W B4 C41 C42 C43 W

C31 1 2 5 4 0.510 C41 1 1/3 1/4 0.122
C32 1/2 1 3 2 0.267
C42 3 1 1/2 0.320
C33 1/5 1/3 1 2 0.122
C34 1/4 1/2 1/2 1 0.101 C43 4 2 1 0.558

Note: λ max =4.132, CR=0.049 0.1. ＜ Note: λ max =3.018, CR=0.016 0.10. ＜
 A Model of Coal Mine Water Disaster Emergency Logistics Risk Assessment 539

Table 6. Comprehensive sorting of the index weights

Index C C11 C12 C13 C14 C21

Weight W 0.131 0.078 0.032 0.038 0.073
Index C C22 C23 C24 C31 C32
Weight W 0.226 0.127 0.041 0.082 0.043
Index C C33 C34 C41 C42 C43
Weight W 0.020 0.016 0.012 0.030 0.053
＜
Note: CR=0.028 0.10.

3.2 Constructing the BP Neural Network

(1) Determining the network topology

The first step is to determine the number of the BP neural network layers. The
more complex the neural network structure is, the stronger ability it has to deal with
the complex nonlinear problems, but it also means longer training time. However, if
the network structure is too simple, network training will be difficult to converge.
Hecht Niclson proved that any continuous function in a closed interval can be
approached to by a BP neural network which contains only one hidden layer.
Therefore, this paper uses three-layer BP neural network with one hidden layer to
establish mine water disaster emergency logistics risk assessment model, whose
structure is shown in Figure 3.

x1 wij o1
x2 o2 vk y
x3
om
xn

Fig. 3. Three-layer BP neural network

Then, the node number of each layer is to be determined. According to the coal
mine water disaster emergency logistics risk evaluation index system, the 15
secondary indexes are taken as the input network neurons; As a result, the input nodes
number is15. Then the risk assessment score is taken as the output of the network, so
the output layer node number l =1. While in the hidden layer, universal approximation
theorem requires sufficient nodes. However, too many nodes will bring excessive
number of connections and reduce the network generalization ability. Therefore, we
should first determine the number of hidden layer nodes in the range, and then take
the maximum in the range. The value range of the hidden layer nodes
is ⎡⎣ nl ≤ m ≤ n ( l + 3 ) + 1⎤⎦ , m takes the maximum integer between [4, 8], so m=8.
540 J. Wang, H. Zhong, and L. Feng

The last step is to select the excitation functions of each layer. The input layer
neurons’ excitation function f ( x ) = x , which means the value of input layer neurons
will be weighted and sent to the hidden layer neurons directly without any processing.
The hidden layer and output layer neurons’ excitation functions both are Sigmoid-
type function f ( x ) = 1 / (1 + e - x ) . The characteristic of the function is that: its domain
is all real numbers, and its value rang is (0, 1), what’ more, the function is infinitely
differentiable.
(2) Training the BP neural network
The first step is to determine the initial parameters of the network. At present, there
is still not an accepted method to select the initial weights, and the general way is
taking the random number between [-1, l]. The thresholds of the hidden and output
layer take the numbers between [0, 1], which can be randomly generated or take a
certain value. Here the initial weights and thresholds are randomly generated.
The next step is to select the sample data. For the quantitative indexes, the data is
obtained through practical investigation. While for the qualitative indexes, the data is
obtained by the form of experts scoring. The scoring interval is [0, 100], and the
higher scores indicate higher level. The weight of each expert is the same, and the
mean score is taken as the score of the index.
The sample data need to be preprocessed before being input the network. The
initial data must be converted into dimensionless data. In other words, the original
index value should be translated into the evaluation value without the influence of the
measurement unit, having the same magnitude, and containing the original index
evaluation information. According to the training need of the network, we choose the
shift and range transform method as the dimensionless method, and compress the data
range to the interval [0, 1]. The process is as follows:
Setting the value interval of the Kth index Xk [Ck1, Ck2], when the value changes in
the same direction with the target, we usually take the standardization formula as
follows.
X k − Ck 1
rk = (1)
Ck 2 − Ck 1
When the value changes in the opposite direction with the target, we usually take the
standardization formula as follows.
Ck 2 − X k
rk = (2)
Ck 2 − Ck 1
The processed index value will be weighted computed according to the weights
determined before in order to get the comprehensive evaluation value of risk level.
According to the scores, the risk level is divided into 5 levels. A: very high (0.80-
1.00); B: comparatively high (0.60-0.80); C: acceptable (0.40-0.60); D: comparatively
low (0.20-0.40); E: very low (0.00-0.20).
The last step is to train and test the network. The sample data is divided into two
parts. One part of the sample data is input to the network as the training sample in
order train the initial network until its precision meets the requirement. The rest part
of the sample data is input to the network as the testing sample. If the maximum
relative error between the output value and the expected value is within an acceptable
 A Model of Coal Mine Water Disaster Emergency Logistics Risk Assessment 541

range, it shows that the network has been trained mature. The trained BP neural
network parameters should be saved. When assessing next time, we just need to input
the standardized index value to the mature network to obtain the assessment result.

4 Empirical Analysis
We select 15 typical coal mine water disaster emergency logistics project data in some
region recently as the sample. The quantitative index value is obtained directly, and
the qualitative index value is obtained through expert scoring. The initial data is
converted into dimensionless data. Applying AHP to determine the index weight, we
get the comprehensive risk assessment result by means of weighted calculation, as
shown in Table 7. The first 12 sets of data are taken as the training sample, and the
latter three sets are taken as the test sample.

Table 7. The training and testing samples of the network

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
C11 0.19 0.42 0.00 0.35 0.69 0.96 0.54 0.12 0.65 0.35 1.00 0.15 0.85 0.38 0.62
C12 0.57 0.71 0.17 0.31 0.69 1.00 0.57 0.00 0.40 0.33 0.60 0.05 0.50 0.24 0.19
C13 0.14 0.5 0.00 0.71 1.00 0.36 0.21 0.07 0.64 0.43 0.21 0.14 0.29 0.07 0.00
C14 0.23 0.38 0.15 0.46 0.62 1.00 0.23 0.00 0.08 0.46 0.62 0.08 0.77 0.31 0.15
C21 0.00 0.39 0.94 0.82 0.52 0.58 0.27 0.76 0.61 0.73 0.15 0.79 1.00 0.55 0.70
C22 0.28 0.75 0.56 1.00 0.25 0.64 0.31 0.00 0.92 0.36 0.14 0.67 0.78 0.25 0.53
C23 0.13 0.67 0.21 0.28 0.03 0.36 0.51 0.31 0.67 0.54 0.00 0.18 1.00 0.15 0.41
C24 0.20 0.05 0.34 0.39 0.15 0.07 0.37 0.59 1.00 0.66 0.12 0.00 0.88 0.44 0.17
C31 0.95 0.67 1.00 0.86 0.71 0.57 0.95 0.24 0.00 0.62 0.76 0.67 0.38 1.00 0.86
C32 0.00 0.04 0.33 0.07 0.15 0.44 0.70 0.11 0.59 0.70 0.22 0.26 1.00 0.30 0.15
C33 0.76 0.51 0.78 0.27 0.73 0.00 0.22 0.46 0.41 0.97 0.76 0.73 0.78 0.46 1.00
C34 0.38 0.44 0.22 0.75 0.59 0.53 1.00 0.34 0.19 0.00 0.53 0.31 0.28 0.06 0.25
C41 0.00 0.47 0.16 0.05 0.32 0.05 0.53 0.21 0.32 0.63 0.21 0.37 0.68 0.84 1.00
C42 0.61 0.03 0.65 0.90 0.74 0.97 1.00 0.84 0.81 0.23 0.97 0.90 0.00 0.39 0.68
C43 1.00 0.74 0.21 0.00 0.31 0.54 0.72 0.46 0.18 0.67 0.69 0.90 0.87 0.92 0.79
Output 0.34 0.55 0.41 0.57 0.44 0.62 0.50 0.23 0.59 0.48 0.42 0.43 0.75 0.39 0.51
Level D C C C C B C D C C C C B D C

The calculation process is completed by the neural network toolbox of MATLAB

software, and the target error is set to 0.001. After 358 times training, the error falls to
the target range, and the network parameters will be saved at this time. Then, the
remaining 13, 14, 15 sets of data are input to the network which has been trained
mature. Comparing the relative error between the output value and the desired output
value, we can get the test results shown in Table 8.
542 J. Wang, H. Zhong, and L. Feng

Table 8. Test results

Expected value Actual value Relative error (%) Output level

13 0.75 0.78 4.0 B
14 0.39 0.38 -2.5 D
15 0.51 0.53 3.9 C

In Table 8, the maximal relative error between the output value and the desired
output value in the test sample is no more than 4.0%, and the output risk levels are
exactly the same with the expected output levels. It means this neural network model
can be used in coal mine water disaster emergency logistics risk assessment.

5 Conclusion
According to the actual needs of coal mine water disaster emergency logistics risk
assessment; this paper combines AHP with BP neural network in the risk assessment.
First, we utilize the superiority of AHP in weights determination to determine the risk
assessment indexes weights and calculate the comprehensive evaluation results. Then,
we take advantage of BP neural network’s self-learning, self-organization and strong
nonlinear approximation ability to reduce the subjectivity of the evaluation process.
According to demonstration analyses, the coal mine water disaster emergency
logistics risk assessment mode is proved to be applicable.

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