Prediction of daily rainfall by a hybrid wavelet-season-neuro technique

Accurate daily rainfall prediction is required for accurate streamflow prediction, flooding risk analysis, constructing a reliable flood control and early warning system. However, because of its nonlinearity, prediction of daily rainfall with high accuracy and long prediction lead time is difficult. There are many daily rainfall prediction methods in the literature, but they are known to yield inaccurate predictions with short lead time, require many physical parameters and involve complicated mathematical equations with huge computational burden. Recently, artificial neural network has been used for predicting rainfall with the objective of addressing the above mentioned problems. But still, the accuracy has not been satisfactory and predictions are with short lead time. In this study, two methods called combined season-multilayer perceptron (SAS-MP) and hybrid wavelet-season-multilayer perceptron (W-SAS-MP) were developed to enhance prediction accuracy and extend prediction lead time of daily rainfall up to 5. days by using data from two stations in Turkey. These two models were compared with the stand-alone multilayer perceptron and another most commonly used method called combined wavelet-multilayer perceptron (W-MP). The performances of the models were evaluated by using coefficient of determination, coefficient of efficiency and root mean squared error. The SAS-MP model was found to be better than W-MP in most cases, except lead time day 1, where W-MP performed better. Throughout all the lead times, however, the hybrid W-SAS-MP model performed best with CE values of 0.911 and 0.909, respectively, for prediction lead time of 1. day and 0.588 and 0.570, respectively, for prediction lead time of 5. days at Stations 17836 and 17837, respectively, at the model testing (validation) phase. Therefore, W-SAS-MP can be an appropriate tool for enhancing daily rainfall prediction accuracy and extend prediction lead time.