Coupling machine learning methods with wavelet transforms and the bootstrap and boosting ensemble approaches for drought prediction

Abstract

This study explored the ability of coupled machine learning models and ensemble techniques to predict drought conditions in the Awash River Basin of Ethiopia. The potential of wavelet transforms coupled with the bootstrap and boosting ensemble techniques to develop reliable artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector regression (SVR) models was explored in this study for drought prediction. Wavelet analysis was used as a pre-processing tool and was shown to improve drought predictions. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) (in this case SPI 3, SPI 12 and SPI 24) is a meteorological drought index that was forecasted using the aforementioned models and these SPI values represent short and long-term drought conditions. The performances of all models were compared using RMSE, MAE, and R2. The prediction results indicated that the use of the boosting ensemble technique consistently improved the correlation between observed and predicted SPIs. In addition, the use of wavelet analysis improved the prediction results of all models. Overall, the wavelet boosting ANN (WBS-ANN) and wavelet boosting SVR (WBS-SVR) models provided better prediction results compared to the other model types evaluated.