A Method for Predicting Indoor CO2 Concentration in University Classrooms: An RF-TPE-LSTM Approach

Classrooms play a pivotal role in students’ learning, and maintaining optimal indoor air quality is crucial for their well-being and academic performance. Elevated CO2 levels can impair cognitive abilities, underscoring the importance of accurate predictions of CO2 concentrations. To address the issue of inadequate analysis of factors affecting classroom CO2 levels in existing models, leading to suboptimal feature selection and limited prediction accuracy, we introduce the RF-TPE-LSTM model in this study. Our model integrates factors that affect classroom CO2 levels to enhance predictions, including occupancy, temperature, humidity, and other relevant factors. It combines three key components: random forest (RF), tree-structured Parzen estimator (TPE), and long short-term memory (LSTM). By leveraging these techniques, our model enhances the predictive capabilities and refines itself through Bayesian optimization using TPE. Experiments conducted on a self-collected dataset of classroom CO2 concentrations and influencing factors demonstrated significant improvements in the MAE, RMSE, MAPE, and R2. Specifically, the MAE, RMSE, and MAPE were reduced to 2.96, 5.54, and 0.60%, respectively, with the R2 exceeding 98%, highlighting the model’s effectiveness in assessing indoor air quality.