Artificial neural network based hybrid modeling approach for flood inundation modeling

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• A hybrid modeling approach based on artificial neural networks is developed to simulate flood inundation with time. • The hybrid model improves model performance in data-sparse regions by leveraging information in data-rich regions. • It is important to consider trade-offs between data availability and model complexity when developing data-driven models. Flood inundation models are important tools in flood management. Commonly used flood inundation models, such as hydrodynamic or simplified conceptual models, are either computationally intensive or cannot simulate the temporal behavior of floods. Therefore, emulation models based on data-driven methods, such as artificial neural networks (ANNs), have been developed. However, the performance of ANN models, like any other data-driven models, is limited by available data and will not perform well in data-sparse regions. In this study, we developed an ANN-based hybrid modeling approach to improve model performance in data-sparse regions by leveraging better model performance in data-rich regions. We applied our proposed hybrid modeling approach with three ANN models, including the traditional point-based ANN and two newly proposed block-based ANN models. The results demonstrate that all three ANN models have better performance in data-rich regions compared to data-sparse regions as expected, with the block-based ANN with the most complicated model structure performing better in data-rich regions and the simplest point-based ANN performing better in data-sparse regions. The hybrid modeling approach can significantly improve model performance in data-sparse regions, with the hybrid model based on the most complex block-based ANN performing the best. Our results show the importance of considering the trade-offs between data availability and model complexity in developing data-driven models, and demonstrate the potential for improving performance in data-sparse regions by using a hybrid modeling approach that optimizes model complexity based on data availability.