Improving urban water demand forecast using conformal prediction-based hybrid machine learning models

Abstract

This paper presents a probabilistic forecasting method that predicts the future water consumption patterns, taking into account the inherent uncertainty in the system. The proposed method leverages statistical techniques to estimate the probability distribution of future water demand scenarios. The findings of this study will provide decision-makers with a range of possible alternatives that facilitate better planning and management of water resources. We developed a conformal prediction-based hybrid demand forecast model, which combines convolutional neural network (CNN) and bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) while comparing it with other machine learning models for probabilistic hourly water demand forecasting. Additionally, we address crucial considerations when implementing a probabilistic forecasting system, including selecting appropriate data and choosing model parameters. The performance of the proposed model is validated for probabilistic water demand forecasting in real-world settings. Results indicate noteworthy improvement in deterministic and probabilistic predictions by 10 % and 26.7 %, respectively. The findings underscore the potential benefits of this approach for improved decision-making and resource management. The results also demonstrate that the proposed hybrid model outperforms the compared machine learning models with better prediction performance and increased robustness for handling prediction uncertainties.