EGU24-4402, updated on 08 Mar 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-4402
EGU General Assembly 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

A comprehensive method based on machine learning schemes in predicting river flow, case study: Po River

Golmar Golmohammadi1, Babak Razdar2, Kourosh Mohammadi3, Giovanna Grossi2, and Saman Javadi4
Golmar Golmohammadi et al.
  • 1University of Florida, Soil, Water and Ecosystem Sciences, Ona, United States of America (g.golmohammadi@ufl.edu)
  • 2Department of Civil, Environmental, Architectural Engineering and Mathematics (DICATAM), Università degli Studi di Brescia, Brescia (Italy)
  • 3HLV2K Engineering Limited, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
  • 4Department of Water Engineering, College of Aburaihan, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

River flow forecasting has been the focus of many researchers for many years.  The methods evolved from simple statistical methods to highly sophisticated mathematical models.  In recent years, due to the advancement of computers and artificial algorithms, new methods have become increasingly reliable and easier to use.  One of the promising artificial intelligence methods is the Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model.  XGBoost is a scalable, distributed gradient-boosting decision tree machine learning library.  It provides parallel tree boosting and is the leading machine learning library for regression, classification, and ranking problems.  Three different algorithms of XGBoost were used in this research and the results were compared.  These algorithms were Random Search, Grid Search, and CatBoost. The proposed models were conducted in a station located Pò River basin which is the longest river in Italy, and it flows from the Cottian Alps and ends at a delta projecting into the Adriatic Sea new Venice.  The data were divided into training and validation sets.  The statistical indicators included mean square error, Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency, and mean absolute error were calculated for each set to compare the efficiency of each algorithm.  These indicators showed that XGBoost using random search algorithm had better performance, although the other algorithms were also acceptable predictions.  In general, the XGBoost model could be used as a reliable tool to forecast the river flow at locations with enough historical data.

How to cite: Golmohammadi, G., Razdar, B., Mohammadi, K., Grossi, G., and Javadi, S.: A comprehensive method based on machine learning schemes in predicting river flow, case study: Po River, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-4402, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-4402, 2024.