Predicting arsenic and heavy metals contamination in groundwater resources of Ghahavand plain based on an artificial neural network optimized by imperialist competitive algorithm

Background: The effects of trace elements on human health and the environment gives importance to the analysis of heavy metals contamination in environmental samples and, more particularly, human food sources. Therefore, the current study aimed to predict arsenic and heavy metals (Cu, Pb, and Zn) contamination in the groundwater resources of Ghahavand Plain based on an artificial neural network (ANN) optimized by imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA). Methods: This study presents a new method for predicting heavy metal concentrations in the groundwater resources of Ghahavand plain based on ANN and ICA. The developed approaches were trained using 75% of the data to obtain the optimum coefficients and then tested using 25% of the data. Two statistical indicators, the coefficient of determination (R2) and the root-mean-square error (RMSE), were employed to evaluate model performance. A comparison of the performances of the ICA-ANN and ANN models revealed the superiority of the new model. Results of this study demonstrate that heavy metal concentrations can be reliably predicted by applying the new approach. Results: Results from different statistical indicators during the training and validation periods indicate that the best performance can be obtained with the ANN-ICA model. Conclusion: This method can be employed effectively to predict heavy metal concentrations in the groundwater resources of Ghahavand plain