Integrating hydrometeorological information for rainfall-runoff modelling by artificial neural networks

The major purpose of this study is to effectively construct artificial neural networks-based multistep ahead flood forecasting by using hydrometeorological and numerical weather prediction (NWP) information. To achieve this goal, we first compare three mean areal precipitation forecasts: radar/NWP multisource-derived forecasts (Pr), NWP precipitation forecasts (Pn), and improved precipitation forecasts (Pm) by merging Pr and Pn. The analysis shows that the accuracy of Pm is higher than that of Pr and Pn. The analysis also indicates that the NWP precipitation forecasts do provide relative effectiveness to the merging procedure, particularly for forecast lead time of 4–6 h. In sum, the merged products performed well and captured the main tendency of rainfall pattern. Subsequently, a recurrent neural network (RNN)-based multistep ahead flood forecasting techniques is produced by feeding in the merged precipitation. The evaluation of 1–6-h flood forecasting schemes strongly shows that the proposed hydrological model provides accurate and stable flood forecasts in comparison with a conventional case, and significantly improves the peak flow forecasts and the time-lag problem. An important finding is the hydrologic model responses which do not seem to be sensitive to precipitation predictions in lead times of 1–3 h, whereas the runoff forecasts are highly dependent on predicted precipitation information for longer lead times (4–6 h). Overall, the results demonstrate that accurate and consistent multistep ahead flood forecasting can be obtained by integrating predicted precipitation information into ANNs modelling