Prediction of gas emission in mining face based on random forest regression algorithm

The mining face is the main place for gas emission in mines. Accurately predicting the amount of gas emission from the mining face and proposing targeted prevention and control measures are of great significance for ensuring mine safety production. A prediction method for gas emission in mining face based on random forest regression algorithm has been proposed. Using the measured gas emission data from the working face as the original sample, the Bootstrap sampling method is used for random sampling. The out-of-bag (OOB) data assessment score oob_score is used as an evaluation indicator for the random forest regression model tuning parameter and importance of feature variables. The optimal parameters of the model and the percentage of importance of feature variables are calculated. The method ranks the importance proportion of each feature variable and conducts performance analysis of the random forest regression model according to the ranking. The results show that as the number of feature variables increases, the model performance does not show a regular change. When the number of feature variables is small, there may be overfitting. The test results show that the average absolute error and relative error between the predicted and measured values of the created random forest regression model decrease with the increase of the number of feature variables. The increase of the number of feature variables can improve the predictive performance of the model to a certain extent. Compared with the principal component regression analysis method, the random forest regression model reduces the average relative error by 14.29% for the same set of data, resulting in better prediction performance. The principle is simpler, parameter adjustment is easier, and the calculation speed is faster. The results can provide strong theoretical support for predicting gas emission in mining face.