# Evaluating Prediction Models for Airport Passenger Throughput Using a Hybrid Method
## 4 Evaluation Results and Discussion
### The Evaluation Results
#### 4.1.4 Analogy-Based Method  
According to the constructing process of the analogy-based method proposed in Section 2, the APT of all 203 airports can be used as the database for analogy. The target airports for analogy are determined by the levels of the focusing airports. The evaluation results of the analogy-based method on different levels of airports are shown in Table 16.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Province’s Market Share Method** & **Nation’s Market Share Method** & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**City Agglomeration’s Market Share Method**} \\ \cline{2-7}  & **Number of** & **Percentage** & **Number of** & **Percentage** & **Number of** & **Percentage** \\  & **Good Models** & & **Good Models** & & **Good Models** & \\ \hline Criterion 1 & 124 & 61\% & 128 & 63\% & 68 & 56\% \\ Criterion 2 & 134 & 66\% & 133 & 66\% & 73 & 60\% \\ Criterion 3 & 139 & 68\% & 135 & 67\% & 75 & 62\% \\ Criterion 4 & 136 & 67\% & 134 & 66\% & 71 & 59\% \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 12: The evaluating results of market share methods.  
Figure 5: The airports cannot be predicted by the causal models.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Criterion 1**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Criterion 2**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Criterion 3**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Criterion 4**} \\ \cline{2-9} \cline{10-10} \multirow{-2}{*}{**Methods**} & **Number of Good Models** & **Percentage** & **Number of Good Models** & **Percentage** & **Number of Good Models** & **Percentage** \\ \hline \begin{tabular}{c} Summation \\ of all levels \\ \end{tabular} & 146 & 72\% & 152 & 75\% & 153 & 75\% & 152 & 75\% \\ \hline \begin{tabular}{c} APT less \\ than \\ 2 million \\ \end{tabular} & 79 & 61\% & 83 & 64\% & 84 & 65\% & 84 & 65\% \\ \
\begin{tabular}{c} APT \\ between \\ 2 million and \\ 10 million \\ \end{tabular} & 29 & 85\% & 30 & 88\% & 30 & 88\% & 30 & 88\% \\
\begin{tabular}{c} APT more \\ than \\ 10 million \\ \end{tabular} & 38 & 97\% & 39 & 100\% & 39 & 100\% & 38 & 97\% \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 13: The applicability of the market share method on different levels of airports.  
Figure 6: Market share of Baotou airport (BAV).  
Generally, compared with time series models, causal models and market share methods, the performance of the analogy-based method is worse, especially for the smaller airports. In addition, under different criteria, the performances are quite different, which indicates that the prediction accuracy of the analogy-based method is relatively low. By analyzing the applicable scenes of the analogy-based method, it is found that the analogy-based method is more suitable for the APT with a linear trend like Shanghai Pudong Airport (PVG) shown in Figure 7. When the increasing rate of APT is small, the predicted result will be relatively larger than the observation like Sanya Airport (SYX). When the increasing rate of APT is small, the predicted results will be relatively smaller than the observation of Nantong Airport (NTG) and Zhuhai Airport (ZUH).