IJF CFP | The Future of Forecasting: Bridging Theory and Practice

 Call for Papers

International Journal of Forecasting

Special Issue in Celebration of Rob J. Hyndman's 60th Birthday

The Future of Forecasting: Bridging Theory and Practice

 

Guest Editors

George Athanasopoulos, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash University

Tao Hong, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Yanfei Kang, School of Economics and Management, Beihang University

 

Forecasting is a discipline rooted in the interplay between methodological innovations and decision making in practice. While the advances in statistical modeling, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computational methods continue to expand the frontiers of forecasting research, the complex societal and business challenges seek forecasting solutions that are accurate, interpretable, scalable, and actionable.

Throughout his distinguished career, Professor Rob J. Hyndman has exemplified this synergy between theory and practice. His work has fundamentally reshaped modern forecasting by providing unified statistical frameworks for exponential smoothing and state space models, establishing practical methodologies for hierarchical and grouped forecasting, and advancing probabilistic forecasting and forecast evaluation. Equally important, Rob has played a unique role in democratizing forecasting research and practice through the development of widely adopted open-source software, leadership in reproducible research, influential educational resources, and close engagement with practitioners across diverse business sectors. His work has shaped not only the methods researchers develop, but also the way forecasting is taught, implemented, and applied around the world.

To celebrate Professor Hyndman's 60th birthday, the International Journal of Forecasting invites submissions to a special issue entitled "The Future of Forecasting: Bridging Theory and Practice." This special issue seeks to honor Rob's remarkable contributions by bringing together research that reflects both the breadth of his scientific impact and the future directions of the forecasting discipline. We welcome papers that build upon the research areas to which Rob has made foundational contributions, demonstrate how forecasting creates value in practice, and explore emerging ideas that will shape forecasting research and applications in the years to come.

Scope

We welcome original research articles, methodological advances, comprehensive reviews, and impactful application studies that advance the theory, practice, and future development of forecasting. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Foundations of Forecasting

• Exponential smoothing

• State space models

• Time series analysis

• Hierarchical and grouped forecasting

• Probabilistic forecasting

• Count, intermittent, and discrete-valued time series forecasting

• Forecast evaluation and accuracy measures

• Forecast combinations

Forecasting in Practice

• Tourism forecasting

• Retail supply chain forecasting

• Economics and macroeconomic forecasting

• Demographic forecasting

• Energy and utilities forecasting

• Environmental and climate forecasting

• Forecasting software ecosystems and reproducible workflows

• Other industrial and societal applications

The Future of Forecasting

• Machine learning and deep learning for forecasting

• Foundation models and large language models for forecasting

• Human-AI collaboration

• Explainable and trustworthy forecasting

• Decision-driven forecasting and forecasting for optimization

• Adaptive and online forecasting

• AI agents and automated forecasting systems

• Open science and benchmarking

• New application domains and interdisciplinary methodologies and applications

Important Dates

• Call for Papers announced: August, 2026

• Submission deadline: January 15, 2027

• First-round decisions: April 15, 2027

• Final acceptance: June, 2027

• Publication of the Special Issue: December, 2027

Manuscript submission information:

Authors should prepare manuscripts according to the International Journal of Forecasting Guide for Authors. All submissions will undergo the journal's standard rigorous peer-review process and should represent original, unpublished work that is not under consideration elsewhere. To submit a paper for consideration for the special section, please upload your paper online and include a cover letter indicating that the paper is for the special section “The Future of Forecasting: Bridging Theory and Practice”.

Please select 'SI: The Future of Forecasting' as the article type in the submission system of the journal. 

Call for Proposals: IIF-SAS Grant to Promote Research on Forecasting

The International Institute of Forecasters is calling for proposals on how to improve forecasting methods and business forecasting practice. This is the 16th year of the financial support from SAS on this IIF-SAS award. In addition to the $10,000 funding from SAS, the IIF is adding another $10,000 to the award pool this year, so that two $10,000 grants are going to be awarded to the best proposals in methodology and practice/management categories.

The applications are due on September 30, 2019. The application must include: 

• Description of the project (at most 4 pages) 
• C.V./resume (brief, 4 page max) 
• Budget and work-plan for the project (brief, 1 page max) 

Criteria for the award of the grant will include likely impact on forecasting methods and business applications. 

Details about the award can be found from the IIF website. For the frequent readers of this blog and SWEET members, I'm listing the energy related projects that were awarded in the last decade:

• Robust kernel-free nonlinear support vector regression models for load forecasting. Jian Luo, Dongbei University of Finance & Economics, China. (2018-2019 grant, methodology category)
• Hierarchy-based disaggregate forecasting using deep machine learning in power system time series. Cong Feng and Jie Zhang, The University of Texas at Dallas, USA. (2017-2018 grant, business applications category)
• Convolutional neural networks for spatio-temporal wind speed forecasting. Fernando Cyrino and Bruno Q. Bastos, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (2017-2018 grant, methodology category)
• Short-term load forecasting using rule-based seasonal exponential smoothing incorporating special day effects. Siddharth Arora and James Taylor, University of Oxford, UK. (2010-2011 grant, business applications category)

Best luck!

Call For Papers: Food and Agriculture Forecasting | International Journal of Forecasting

International Journal of Forecasting

Special Section on Food and Agriculture Forecasting

The fast growing world population brings a critical challenge to humanity: how to ensure adequate supply and access to safe, healthy food. Accurate forecasts provide valuable information to help in formulating national food and agricultural policies, and to help agriculture companies and farmers adjust their business strategies. Such forecasts cover production, consumption, stocks, trade and prices of major field crops (e.g., corn, sorghum, barley, oats, wheat, rice, soybeans, and cotton) and livestock (e.g., beef, pork, poultry and eggs, and dairy). This special section is to collect high-quality research that involves theoretical and practical aspects of forecasting in food and agriculture. Specifically, it encourages papers that inspire actionable insights and/or make methodological breakthroughs in this area.

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• Forecasting methodologies in food and agriculture
• Major field crops forecasting
• Livestock forecasting 
• Agri-food products forecasting 
• Forecasting in vegetables, fruits and other agriculture commodities
• Agriculture commodities futures market forecasting
• Natural resources forecasting in agriculture and food industry 
• Water and energy forecasting in agriculture 
• Climate forecasting in agriculture

Submission deadline: 31 December 2018

To submit a paper for consideration for the Special Section, please upload your paper online and include a cover letter clearly indicating that the paper is for the special issue “Food and Agriculture Forecasting”. The webpage for online submission is mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijf. Instructions for authors are provided at www.forecasters.org/ijf/authors. All papers will follow IJF’s double-blind refereeing process. For further information about the Special Section, please contact the guest editors.

Guest Editors

Jue Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China (wjue@amss.ac.cn)
Tao Hong, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA (hong@uncc.edu)

Call For Papers: Forecasting for Social Good | International Journal of Forecasting

International Journal of Forecasting

Special Issue on Forecasting for Social Good

The area of forecasting and its link to decision making has been under research for decades. Whilst there have been many influential contributions seeking to examine the effects of forecasting under financial and economic motives, very little has been contributed (both in regular conferences and journal publications) on forecasting with social impact – that is forecasting for the social good, regardless of the financial implications, or optimizations attempted based on economic terms.

The International Journal of Forecasting (IJF) is excited to announce this Call For Papers for the special issue on “Forecasting for Social Good”. The purpose of the special issue is to attract high quality papers that are concerned with the social impact of forecasting.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Health and healthcare
• Humanitarian operations
• Disaster relief
• Education
• Social services
• Environment
• Sustainability
• Sharing economy
• Transportation
• Urban planning
• Fraud, collusion, and corruption
• Government policy
• Poverty
• Privacy
• Cyber security
• Crime and terrorism

Submission Deadline: 31 October 2018.

Submission Guidelines:

To submit a paper for consideration for the Special Issue, please upload your paper online and include a cover letter clearly indicating that the paper is for the special issue “Forecasting for Social Good”. The webpage for online submission is mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijf. Instructions for authors are provided at www.forecasters.org/ijf/authors . All papers will follow IJF’s double-blind refereeing process. For further information about the Special Issue, please contact the guest editors.

Guest Editors

Bahman Rostami-Tabar, Cardiff University, UK
Email: rostami-tabarb@cardiff.ac.uk

Michael Porter, University of Alabama, USA
Email: mporter@culverhouse.ua.edu

Tao Hong, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
Email: hong@uncc.edu

Call For Papers: Data Analytics for Energy, Water, and Environment | IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management

IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management

Special Issue on Data Analytics for Energy, Water, and Environment

In 2008, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering proposed 14 grand challenges for engineering, of which five were related to energy, water, and environment. The world population has exceeded 7.6 billion in 2018, up from 6.7 billion in 2008. A common goal of the human beings is to meet the global need of energy and water without sacrificing the environment.

A growing interest in the recent decade is data analytics. Many industries have embarked analytics to extract actionable insights from the data and to make informed business decisions. This special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management is aimed at highlighting the state of the art in data analytics applications in energy, water and environment.

The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Quantitative models for water-energy nexus
• Evaluating energy technology portfolios
• Data integration and infusion for energy, water and environment applications
• Cyber-physical systems for sustainable development
• Power supply and air pollution
• Building energy efficiency and indoor air quality
• Energy efficiency analytics enabled by smart meter data
• Clean energy/water access 
• Energy systems planning under climate and water challenges
• Risks and uncertainties in energy engineering projects
• Energy management considering consumer behaviors
• Sustainable supply chain design and inventory control
• Water and energy management in sustainable agriculture
• Environment, energy, and alternative transportation technologies

Submission Process

Please prepare the manuscript according to IEEE-TEM’s guidelines and submit it the journal’s Manuscript Central site. Please clearly state in the cover letter that the submission is for this special issue. 

Schedule

Interested authors send 2-page extended abstracts to the Corresponding Guest Editor by August 31st 2018
Decisions on acceptance of abstracts by November 30th 2018
Full papers submitted by May 31st 2019

Corresponding Guest Editor

Dr. Tao Hong (hong@uncc.edu)

Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management 

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Guest Editors

Dr. Hua Cai, Purdue University

Dr. Gang He, Stony Brook University

Dr. Guiping Hu, Iowa State University

Dr. Yueming Qiu, University of Maryland

Dr. Ekundayo Shittu, George Washington University

Dr. Hongliang Zhang, Louisiana State University

Dr. Ning Zhang, Tsinghua University

Editor-in-Chief

Dr. Tugrul Daim, Portland State University

Call For Papers: Forecasting in Modern Power Systems | Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy

Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy

Special Section on Forecasting in Modern Power Systems 

Power systems have been evolving over the past century. The grid is getting more and more sophisticated due to modern technologies and business requirements, such as implementation of smart grid technologies, deployment of utra-high voltage transmission systems, and integration of ultra-high levels of renewable resources. All of these factors are challenging today’s energy forecasting practice. This special section of the Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy is aimed at answering the following question: How to better forecast the supply, demand and prices to accommodate the changes in modern power systems?

The topics of interests include, but are not limited

• Probabilistic energy forecasting
• Forecasting in multiple energy systems
• High dimensional wind and solar power forecasting
• Load forecasting with temporal and/or geographic hierarchies
• Combination methods for energy forecasting

Submission Guidelines

http://www.editorialmanager.com/mpce or link via
http://www.springer.com/40565
http://www.mpce.info

The article templates can be downloaded from http://www.mpce.info.

Important Dates

Paper Submission Deadline:    June 30, 2017
Acceptance Notification:         December 31, 2017
Date of Publication:                 March 2018

Guest Editorial Board

Guest Editors-in-Chief
Wei-Jen Lee, University of Texas at Arlington, USA
E-mail: wlee@uta.edu
Tao Hong, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
E-mail: hongtao01@gmail.com

Guest Editors
Jing Huang, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia
Duehee Lee, Arizona State University, USA
Franklin Quilumba, National Polytechnic School, Ecuador
Jingrui Xie, SAS Institute, USA
Ning Zhang, Tsinghua University, China
Florian Ziel, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

Editor-In-Chief and Deputy

Professor Yusheng Xue (State Grid Electric Power Research Institute, Nanjing, China)
Professor Kit Po Wong (The University of Western Australia)


CONTACT INFORMATION
For more information, please do not hesitate to contact
Ms. Ying ZHENG
Tel: 86 25 8109 3060 Fax: 86 25 8109 3040
E-mail: zhengying1@sgepri.sgcc.com.cn; mpce@alljournals.cn

About Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy (MPCE)

MPCE sponsored by State Grid Electric Power Research Institute (SGEPRI) is Golden Open Accessed, peer-reviewed and bimonthly published journal in English. It is published by SGEPRI Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg commencing from June, 2013.It is indexed in SCIE, Scopus, Google Scholar, CSAD, DOAJ, CSA, OCLC, SCImago, ProQuest, etc. It is the first international power engineering journal originated in mainland China. MPCE publishes original papers, short letters and review articles in the field of modern power systems with focus on smart grid technology and renewable energy integration, etc. MPCE is dedicated to presenting top-level academic achievements in the fields of modern power systems and clean energy by international researchers and engineers, and endeavors to serve as a bridge between Chinese and global researchers in the power industry.

Call For Papers: 2017 International Symposium on Energy Analytics (ISEA2017)

2017 International Symposium on Energy Analytics

(ISEA2017)

Cairns, Australia, June 22-23, 2017

Predictive Energy Analytics in the Big Data World

Modern information and communication technologies have brought big data to virtually every segment of the energy and utility industries. While predictive analytics is an important and necessary step in the data-driven decision-making process, how to generate better forecasts in the big data world is an emerging issue and challenge to both industry and academia.

This symposium aims at bringing forecasting experts and practitioners together to share experiences and best practices on a wide range of important business problems in the energy industry. Here the energy industry broadly covers utilities, oil, gas and mining industries. The subjects to be forecasted range from supply, demand and price, to asset/system condition and customer count.

The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Probabilistic energy forecasting
• Hierarchical energy forecasting
• High-dimensional energy forecasting
• High-frequency and high-resolution energy forecasting
• Equipment failure prediction
• Power systems fault prediction
• Automatic outlier detection
• Load profiling
• Customer segmentation
• Customer churn prediction

If you are interested in contributing a presentation to this symposium, please submit a one-page extended abstract to both guest editors via email with the subject line “ISEA2017 Abstract Submission”. Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit full papers to the International Journal of Forecasting (IJF) or Power and Energy Magazine.

Important ISEA2017 dates

• Abstract submission open - November 15, 2016
• Abstract submission due - January 15, 2017
• Abstract acceptance - February 15, 2017
• Early registration deadline - April 14, 2017
• ISEA2017 - June 22-23, 2017
• ISF2017 - June 25-28, 2017
• Paper submission for consideration of journal/magazine publication - June 30, 2017

Important publication dates

• First round review completion - August 31, 2017
• Final version ready for Power and Energy Magazine - October 31, 2017
• Final version ready for IJF - December 31, 2017
• Power and Energy Magazine special issue publication - May/June, 2018
• IJF special section publication - 2018

Guest Editors:
Tao Hong, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA (hong@uncc.edu)
Pierre Pinson, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark (ppin@elektro.dtu.dk)

Editor-in-Chief
Rob J Hyndman, Monash University, Australia
International Journal of Forecasting

Call For Papers: GlobalSIP'15 Symposium on Signal and Information Processing for Optimizing Future Energy Systems

Posting this CFP per request of Dr. Hao Zhu.

GlobalSIP'15 Symposium on 

Signal and Information Processing for Optimizing Future Energy Systems

Orlando, Florida, USA, December 14-16, 2015

Make a difference in the Energy & Meteorology World!

Make a difference in the Energy & Meteorology World!

Guest Blogger: Dr. Alberto Troccoli

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia

I’ve always felt the urge to see my scientific research come out of the computer screen to land on a practical everyday situation. It is often much easier said than done however. As scientists we like to think our research is going to be used by someone one day, but the truth is that most of the time we prefer the comfort of the "ivory tower". We may feel a sense of relief when, in project proposals, we include the odd sentence about the critical role of our research for society, often added in an attempt to get our proposal across the line.

Oceanography, seasonal climate forecasts and more generally climate research has been a satisfying endeavor for me for many a year but the baby steps in this area of research, despite the size of the effort, had become less and less fulfilling. What a better time then to use weather and climate (collectively referred to as meteorology) observations and forecasts to directly assist society! And what better time to simultaneously assist society in the once-in-a-few-generation overhaul of the energy system! To contribute to the sustainability, resilience and efficiency of energy systems under ever changing weather and climate appeared (and it still does!) like a thrilling goal!

Call For Papers: Big Data Analytics for Grid Modernization | IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid

IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid

Special Issue on Big Data Analytics for Grid Modernization

Advanced analytics is playing a vital role in the age of big data, such as managing smart cities, predicting crime activities, optimizing medicine formula based on genetic defects, detecting financial frauds, and personalizing marketing campaigns. Many industries are taking advantage of the big data after years of research and development. With the increasing deployment of new metering and monitoring devices such as phasor measurement units (PMUs) and smart meters, the electric utilities are collecting a large variety of data at an unprecedented granularity and volume.  So the optimal management and utilization large amounts of collected data become a huge challenge in utilities’ operations and planning. This special issue aims to publish original research papers and visionary reviews on the technologies, algorithms and case studies associated with big data analytics for smart grid applications and modernizing the electric power grid.

Call For Papers: Probabilistic Energy Forecasting | International Journal of Forecasting

International Journal of Forecasting

Special Issue on Probabilistic Energy Forecasting

In today's competitive and dynamic environment, more and more decision making processes in the energy industry are relying on probabilistic forecasts. The applications of probabilistic energy forecasts spread across planning and operations of the entire energy value chain. We are seeking papers from researchers working on the areas of probabilistic energy forecasting. "Energy forecasting" refers to "forecasting in the energy industry", which includes but is not limited to forecasting supply, demand and price of electricity, gas, water, and renewable energy resources. The probabilistic forecasts can take various forms, e.g., from quantile to full density forecasts, probabilistic forecasts for multi-categorical variables or functional data.