A method of rainfall runoff forecasting based on deep convolution neural networks

The prediction of rainfall runoff is an ordinary function in hydrological information process. As it bears the strong locality and nonlinearity, accurate prediction is challenging. In the paper a novel approach of rainfall runoff prediction based on convolutional deep belief networks is proposed. The constructed deep learning machine better simulates the complex nonlinearity within data. Even if observation values are limited, it still maintains very good prediction capability. The proposed model is testified and validated in the Luo River Basin (Guangdong Province, China) for training and testing the prediction performance. At the same time, the traditional Xinanjiang rainfall runoff model was introduced to evaluate and compare results with the ones, made by the new model. Moreover, multiple forecasts (e.g. 1-day, 3-day or 5-day) achieved to demonstrate better model performance. The results prove that the currently proposed model could predict the runoff more accurately than the Xinanjiang model.