A Hybrid Model for Annual Runoff Time Series Forecasting Using Elman Neural Network with Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition

• Published in: Water (Basel) Vol. 10; no. 4; p. 416
• Main Authors: Zhang, Xike, Zhang, Qiuwen, Zhang, Gui, Nie, Zhiping, Gui, Zifan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.04.2018
• Subjects: Annual runoff; Back propagation networks; Case studies; Correlation coefficient; Correlation coefficients; Coupled modes; Decomposition; Dongting Lake basin; Elman neural network (ENN); ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD); Errors; Forecasting; hybrid model; Hydrologic models; Hydrology; Lake basins; Lakes; Model accuracy; Model testing; Neural networks; Outlets; Performance evaluation; Rivers; Root-mean-square errors; Runoff; Time series; time series forecasting; China; Taiwan
• ISSN: 2073-4441; 2073-4441
• DOI: 10.3390/w10040416

Because of the complex nonstationary and nonlinear characteristics of annual runoff time series, it is difficult to achieve good prediction accuracy. In this paper, ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) coupled with Elman neural network (ENN)—namely the EEMD-ENN model—is proposed to reduce the difficulty of modeling and to improve prediction accuracy. The annual runoff time series from four hydrological stations in the lower reaches of the four main rivers in the Dongting Lake basin, and one at the outlet of the lake, are used as a case study to test this new hybrid model. First, the nonstationary and nonlinear original annual runoff time series are decomposed to several relatively stable intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) by using EEMD. Then, each IMF is predicted by using ENN. Next, the predicted results of each IMF are aggregated as the final prediction results for the original annual runoff time series. Finally, five statistical indices are adopted to measure the performance of the proposed hybrid model compared with a back propagation (BP) neural network, EEMD-BP, and ENN models—mean absolute error (MAE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE), Pearson correlation coefficient (R) and Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency (NSCE). The performance comparison results show that the proposed hybrid model performs better than the BP, EEMD-BP or ENN models. In short, the developed hybrid model can provide a significant improvement in annual runoff time series forecasting.