Daily runoff forecasting based on data-augmented neural network model

Abstract

Abstract Accurate daily runoff prediction plays an important role in the management and utilization of water resources. In order to improve the accuracy of prediction, this paper proposes a deep neural network (CAGANet) composed of a convolutional layer, an attention mechanism, a gated recurrent unit (GRU) neural network, and an autoregressive (AR) model. Given that the daily runoff sequence is abrupt and unstable, it is difficult for a single model and combined model to obtain high-precision daily runoff predictions directly. Therefore, this paper uses a linear interpolation method to enhance the stability of hydrological data and apply the augmented data to the CAGANet model, the support vector machine (SVM) model, the long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network and the attention-mechanism-based LSTM model (AM-LSTM). The comparison results show that among the four models based on data augmentation, the CAGANet model proposed in this paper has the best prediction accuracy. Its Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency can reach 0.993. Therefore, the CAGANet model based on data augmentation is a feasible daily runoff forecasting scheme.