Data-driven forecasting and modeling of runoff flow to reduce flood risk using a novel hybrid wavelet-neural network based on feature extraction

The reliable forecasting of river flow plays a key role in reducing the risk of floods. Regarding nonlinear and variable characteristics of hydraulic processes, the use of data-driven and hybrid methods has become more noticeable. Thus, this paper proposes a novel hybrid wavelet-neural network (WNN) method with feature extraction to forecast river flow. To do this, initially, the collected data are analyzed by the wavelet method. Then, the number of inputs to the ANN is determined using feature extraction, which is based on energy, standard deviation, and maximum values of the analyzed data. The proposed method has been analyzed by different input and various structures for daily, weekly, and monthly flow forecasting at Ellen Brook river station, western Australia. Furthermore, the mean squares error (MSE), root mean square error (RMSE), and the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) is used to evaluate the performance of the suggested method. Furthermore, the obtained findings were compared to those of other models and methods in order to examine the performance and efficiency of the feature extraction process. It was discovered that the proposed feature extraction model outperformed their counterparts, especially when it came to long-term forecasting