The World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic in early 2020. A comprehensive understanding of the epidemiological characteristics of this virus is crucial to limit its spreading. Therefore, this research applies artificial intelligence-based models to predict the prevalence of the COVID-19 outbreak in Egypt. These models are long short-term memory network (LSTM), convolutional neural network, and multilayer perceptron neural network. They are trained and validated using the dataset records from 14 February 2020 to 15 August 2020. The results of the models are evaluated using the determination coefficient and root mean square error. The LSTM model exhibits the best performance in forecasting the cumulative infections for one week and one month ahead. Finally, the LSTM model with the optimal parameter values is applied to forecast the spread of this epidemic for one month ahead using the data from 14 February 2020 to 30 June 2021. The total size of infections, recoveries, and deaths is estimated to be 285,939, 234,747, and 17,251 cases on 31 July 2021. This study could assist the decision-makers in developing and monitoring policies to confront this disease.

Forecasting meteorological and hydrological drought using standardized metrics of rainfall and runoff (SPI/SRI) is critical for the long-term planning and management of water resources at the global and regional levels. In this study, various machine learning (ML) techniques including four methods (i.e., ANN, ANFIS, SVM, and DT) were utilized to construct hydrological drought forecasting models in the Wadi Ouahrane basin in the northern part of Algeria. The performance of ML models was assessed using evaluation criteria, including RMSE, MAE, NSE, and R2. The results showed that all the ML models accurately predicted hydrological drought, while the SVM model outperformed the other ML models, with the average RMSE = 0.28, MAE = 0.19, NSE = 0.86, and R2 = 0.90. The coefficient of determination of SVM was 0.95 for predicting SRI at the 12-months timescale; as the timescale moves from higher to lower (12 months to 3 months), R2 starts decreasing.

Construction and demolition waste treatment has become an increasingly pressing economic, social, and environmental concern across the world. This study employs a science mapping approach to provide a thorough and systematic examination of the literature on waste management research. This study identifies the most significant journals, authors, publications, keywords, and active countries using bibliometric and scientometric analysis. The search retrieved 895 publications from the Scopus database between 2001 and 2021. The findings reveal that the annual number of publications has risen from less than 15 in 2006 to more than 100 in 2020 and 2021. The results declare that the papers originated in 80 countries and were published in 213 journals. Review, urbanization, resource recovery, waste recycling, and environmental assessment are the top five keywords. Estimation and quantification, comprehensive analysis and assessment, environmental impacts, performance and behavior tests, management plan, diversion practices, and emerging technologies are the key emerging research topics. To identify research gaps and propose a framework for future research studies, an in-depth qualitative analysis is performed. This study serves as a multi-disciplinary reference for researchers and practitioners to relate current study areas to future trends by presenting a broad picture of the latest research in this field.