Sediment load forecasting of Gobindsagar reservoir using machine learning techniques

With ever advancing computer technology in machine learning, sediment load prediction inside the reservoirs has been computed using various artificially intelligent techniques. The sediment load in the catchment region of Gobindsagar reservoir of India is forecasted in this study utilizing the data collected for years 1971–2003 using several models of intelligent algorithms. Firstly, multi-layered perceptron artificial neural network (MLP-ANN), basic recurrent neural network (RNN), and other RNN based models including long-short term memory (LSTM), and gated recurrent unit (GRU) are implemented to validate and predict the sediment load inside the reservoir. The proposed machine learning models are validated for Gobindsagar reservoir using three influencing factors on yearly basis [rainfall (Ra), water inflow (Iw), and the storage capacity (Cr)]. The results demonstrate that the suggested MLP-ANN, RNN, LSTM, and GRU models produce better results with maximum errors reduced from 24.6% to 8.05%, 7.52%, 1.77%, and 0.05% respectively. For future prediction of the sediment load for next 22 years, the influencing factors were first predicted for next 22 years using ETS forecasting model with the help of data collected for 33 years. Additionally, it was noted that each prediction’s error was lower than that of the reference model. Furthermore, it was concluded that the GRU model predicts better results than the reference model and its alternatives. Secondly, by comparing the prediction precision of all the machine learning models established in this study, it can be evidently shown that the LSTM and GRU models were superior to the MLP-ANN and RNN models. It is also observed that among all, the GRU took the best precision due to the highest R of 0.9654 and VAF of 91.7689%, and the lowest MAE of 0.7777, RMSE of 1.1522 and MAPE of 0.3786%. The superiority of GRU can also be ensured from Taylor’s diagram. Lastly, Garson’s algorithm and Olden’s algorithm for MLP-ANN, as well as the perturbation method for RNN, LSTM, and GRU models, are used to test the sensitivity analysis of each influencing factor in sediment load forecasting. The sediment load was discovered to be most sensitive to the annual rainfall.