Forecasting of saline intrusion in Ham Luong river, Ben Tre province (Southern Vietnam) using Box-Jenkins ARIMA models

Abstract

Introduction: Ham Luong River is a branch of Mekong River located in Ben Tre Province, which has played a crucial role in supporting livelihoods of local residents and the province's economic development. However, the saline intrusion has been expanding in Ham Luong River, which seriously affects the productive agriculture, aquaculture, and further causes tremendous difficulties for local people's lives. Thus, it is crucial to have research for forecast the saline intrusion in Ham Luong River. Our aim was to develop mathematical models in order to forecast the saline intrusion in Ham Luong River, Ben Tre Province.
 Methods: The Auto regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model was built to forecast the weekly saline intrusion in Ham Luong River, which has been obtained from Ben Tre Province's Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting Center over eight years (from 2012 to 2019).
 Results: The saline concentration increased from January to March and then decreased from April to June. The highest salinity occurred in February and March while the lowest salinity was observed in early June. Moreover, the ARIMA technique provided an adequate predictive model for a forecast of the saline intrusion in An Thuan, Son Doc, and An Hiep station. However, the ARIMA model in My Hoa and Vam Mon might be improved upon by other forecasting methods.
 Conclusion: Our study suggested that the nonseasonal/seasonal ARIMA is an easy-to-use modeling tool for a quick forecast of the saline intrusion.