Chlorophyll-a Predicting Model Based on Dynamic Neural Network

Abstract

Algal blooms are one of the most prevalent global problems. Studying the Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) predicting model helps to control algal blooms. Predicting the behavior of algae is difficult because of the complex physical, chemical, and biological processes involved. Artificial neural network (ANN) models have been determined to be useful and efficient, especially for such problems for which the characteristics of the processes are difficult to describe using numerical models. An indoor simulated environment is designed for algal cultivation to analyze the temporal change in the algae biomass of Taihu Lake during summer. A Chl-a prediction model based on a nonlinear autoregressive neural network with exogenous inputs (NARX) that can detect and consider within the time dependency is proposed. The NARX model is compared to a static neural network and a dynamic neural network: feedforward neural network (FNN) and Elman recurrent neural network (ERNN). The performance of the proposed NARX model was examined with experimental data collected over 3 months in 2010. The results showed that the NARX model outperformed the other ANN models and significantly enhance the accuracy of Chl-a prediction.