An interpretable machine learning model for predicting cavity water depth and cavity length based on XGBoost–SHAP

Abstract In contrast to the traditional black box machine learning model, the white box model can achieve higher prediction accuracy and accurately evaluate and explain the prediction results. Cavity water depth and cavity length of aeration facilities are predicted in this research based on Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and a Bayesian optimization technique. The Shapley Additive Explanation (SHAP) method is then utilized to explain the prediction results. This study demonstrates how SHAP may order all features and feature interaction terms in accordance with the significance of the input features. The XGBoost–SHAP white box model can reasonably explain the prediction results of XGBoost both globally and locally and can achieve prediction accuracy comparable to the black box model. The cavity water depth and cavity length white box model developed in this study have a promising future application in the shape optimization of aeration facilities and the improvement of model experiments.