<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>In the present article, an attempt is made to derive optimal data-driven machine learning methods for forecasting an average daily and monthly rainfall of the Fukuoka city in Japan. This comparative study is conducted concentrating on three aspects: modelling inputs, modelling methods and pre-processing techniques. A comparison between linear correlation analysis and average mutual information is made to find an optimal input technique. For the modelling of the rainfall, a novel hybrid multi-model method is proposed and compared with its constituent models. The models include the artificial neural network, multivariate adaptive regression splines, the <italic>k</italic>-nearest neighbour, and radial basis support vector regression. Each of these methods is applied to model the daily and monthly rainfall, coupled with a pre-processing technique including moving average and principal component analysis. In the first stage of the hybrid method, sub-models from each of the above methods are constructed with different parameter settings. In the second stage, the sub-models are ranked with a variable selection technique and the higher ranked models are selected based on the leave-one-out cross-validation error. The forecasting of the hybrid model is performed by the weighted combination of the finally selected models.</p></abstract>

In the present article, an attempt is made to derive optimal data-driven machine learning methods for forecasting an average daily and monthly rainfall of the Fukuoka city in Japan. This comparative study is conducted concentrating on three aspects: modelling inputs, modelling methods and pre-processing techniques. A comparison between linear correlation analysis and average mutual information is made to find an optimal input technique. For the modelling of the rainfall, a novel hybrid multi-model method is proposed and compared with its constituent models. The models include the artificial neural network, multivariate adaptive regression splines, the k-nearest neighbour, and radial basis support vector regression. Each of these methods is applied to model the daily and monthly rainfall, coupled with a pre-processing technique including moving average and principal component analysis. In the first stage of the hybrid method, sub-models from each of the above methods are constructed with different parameter settings. In the second stage, the sub-models are ranked with a variable selection technique and the higher ranked models are selected based on the leave-one-out cross-validation error. The forecasting of the hybrid model is performed by the weighted combination of the finally selected models.

A rainfall forecasting method using machine learning models and its application to the Fukuoka city case

Department of Systems Design and Informatics Kyushu Institute of Technology, 680-4 Kawazu, Iizuka, Fukuoka, Japan

Department of Systems Design and Informatics Kyushu Institute of Technology, 680-4 Kawazu, Iizuka, Fukuoka, Japan, School of Electronic Engineering Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland

International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science

In the present article, an attempt is made to derive optimal data-driven machine learning methods for forecasting an average daily and monthly rainfall of the...

A rainfall forecasting method using machine learning models and its application to the Fukuoka city case

Published Online: Dec 28, 2012

Page range: 841 - 854

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/v10006-012-0062-1

This content is open access.