Ranking of hybrid wavelet-AI models by TOPSIS method for estimation of daily flow discharge

Abstract

Abstract This research uses the multi-layer perceptron–artificial neural network (MLP-ANN), radial basis function–ANN (RBF-ANN), least square support vector machine (LSSVM), adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), M5 model tree (M5T), gene expression programming (GEP), genetic programming (GP) and Bayesian network (BN) with five types of mother wavelet functions (MWFs: coif4, db10, dmey, fk6 and sym7) and selects the best model by the TOPSIS method. The case study is the Navrood watershed in the north of Iran and the considered parameters are daily flow discharge, temperature and precipitation during 1991 to 2018. The derived results show that the best method is the hybrid of the M5T model with sym7 wavelet function. The MWFs were decomposed by discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The combination of AI models and MWFs improves the correlation coefficient of MLP, RBF, LSSVM, ANFIS, GP, GEP, M5T and BN by 8.05%, 4.6%, 8.14%, 8.14%, 22.97%, 7.5%, 5.75% and 10% respectively.