Solar Phys DOI 10.1007/s11207-011-9896-1 IMAGE PROCESSING IN THE PETABYTE ERA Solar Flare Prediction Using Advanced Feature Extraction, Machine Learning, and Feature Selection Omar W. Ahmed · Rami Qahwaji · Tufan Colak · Paul A. Higgins · Peter T. Gallagher · D. Shaun Bloomfield Received: 21 March 2011 / Accepted: 6 November 2011 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract Novel machine-learning and feature-selection algorithms have been developed to study: i) the flare-prediction-capability of magnetic feature (MF) properties generated by the recently developed Solar Monitor Active Region Tracker (SMART); ii) SMART’s MF properties that are most significantly related to flare occurrence. Spatiotemporal associa- tion algorithms are developed to associate MFs with flares from April 1996 to Decem- ber 2010 in order to differentiate flaring and non-flaring MFs and enable the application of machine-learning and feature-selection algorithms. A machine-learning algorithm is ap- plied to the associated datasets to determine the flare-prediction-capability of all 21 SMART MF properties. The prediction performance is assessed using standard forecast-verification measures and compared with the prediction measures of one of the standard technologies for flare-prediction that is also based on machine-learning: Automated Solar Activity Prediction (ASAP). The comparison shows that the combination of SMART MFs with machine-learning has the potential to achieve more accurate flare-prediction than ASAP. Feature-selection al- Image Processing in the Petabyte Era Guest Editors: J. Ireland and C.A. Young O.W. Ahmed ( ) · R. Qahwaji · T. Colak School of Computing Informatics and Media, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK e-mail: o.w.ahmed@bradford.ac.uk R. Qahwaji e-mail: r.s.r.qahwaji@bradford.ac.uk T. Colak e-mail: t.colak@bradford.ac.uk P.A. Higgins · P.T. Gallagher · D.S. Bloomfield Astrophysics Research Group, School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland P.A. Higgins e-mail: pohuigin@gmail.com P.T. Gallagher e-mail: peter.gallagher@tcd.ie D.S. Bloomfield e-mail: shaun.bloomfield@tcd.ie