Application of Artificial Neural Networks, Support Vector Machine and Multiple Model-ANN to Sediment Yield Prediction

Sediment yield is important for maintaining soil health, reservoir sustainability, environmental pollution, and conservation of natural resources. The main aim of the present work is to develop four machine learning models, artificial neural networks (ANNs), radial basis function (RBF), support vector machine (SVM) and multiple model (MM)-ANNs for forecasting daily sediment yield. These models were applied to the Shakkar and Manot watersheds covering 25 years (1990-2015) and 10 years (2000-2010) of rainfall and discharge data, respectively. Results showed that the MM-ANNs model satisfactorily predicted sediment yield and outperformed the other models providing the highest correlation coefficient (0.921, 0.883) and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (0.744, 0.763) and the lowest relative absolute error (0.360, 0.344) and root mean square error (23,609.5, 269,671.5) for the Shakkar and Manot during the test period, respectively. Hence, the MM-ANNs model can be successfully used for sediment prediction.