Monthly Agricultural Reservoir Storage Forecasting Using Machine Learning

Abstract

Storage rate forecasting for the agricultural reservoir is helpful for preemptive responses to disasters such as agricultural drought and planning so as to maintain a stable agricultural water supply. In this study, SVM, RF, and ANN machine learning algorithms were tested to forecast the monthly storage rate of agricultural reservoirs. The storage rate observed over 30 years (1991–2022) was set as a label, and nine datasets for a one- to three-month storage rate forecast were constructed using precipitation and evapotranspiration as features. In all, 70% of the total data was used for training and validation, and the remaining 30% was used as a test. The one-month storage rate forecasting showed that all SVM, RF, and ANN algorithms were highly reliable, with R2 values ≥ 0.8. As a result of the storage rate forecast for two and three months, the ANN and SVM algorithms showed relatively reasonable explanatory power with an average R2 of 0.64 to 0.69, but the RF algorithm showed a large generalization error. The results of comparing the learning time showed that the learning speed was the fastest in the order of SVM, RF, and ANN algorithms in all of the one to three months. Overall, the learning performance of SVM and ANN algorithms was better than RF. The SVM algorithm is the most credible, with the lowest error rates and the shortest training time. The results of this study are expected to provide the scientific information necessary for the decision-making regarding on-site water managers, which is expected to be possible through the connection with weather forecast data.