Daily Streamflow Modelling Using ML Based on Discharge and Rainfall Time Series in the Besós River Basin, Spain

Abstract

Machine learning (ML)-based data-driven modelling is an efficient approach for good estimates of flow and maximum discharge at certain points within a basin. This paper is mainly aimed at evaluating the predictive capability of ML algorithms for daily streamflow modelling in the Besós River Basin (Spain), based on open source flow discharge and rainfall historical time series. In this sense, two modelling scenarios, without and with consideration of the antecedent hydrologic conditions, were evaluated, and three ML algorithms—support vector machines, random forest (RF) and gradient boosting (GB)—were compared to multiple linear regression (MLR), and were implemented. The prediction results revealed that the SVR model outperformed the other suggested models. Additionally, it was deduced that taking into account preceding hydrologic conditions clearly improves prediction results.

Keywords

• streamflow modelling
• machine learning
• data-driven
• preceding hydrologic conditions
• virtual sensor