Hybrid Optimization Algorithm to Combine Neural Network for Rainfall-Runoff Modeling

Rainfall-runoff modeling is very important for Water Resources Management because accurate and timely prediction can avoid accidents, such as the life risk, economic losses, etc. This paper proposed the novel hybrid optimization algorithm to combine Neural Network (NN) for rainfall-runoff modeling, namely HGASA-NN. Firstly, a novel and specialized hybrid optimization strategy by incorporating Simulated Annealing algorithm (SA) into Genetic Algorithm (GA) was used to train the initial connection weights and thresholds of NN. Secondly, the Back Propagation (BP) algorithm was adjusted the final weights and biases. Finally, a numerical example of daily rainfall-runoff data was used to elucidate the forecasting performance of the proposed HGASA-NN model. The HGASA-NN can make use of not only strong global searching ability of the GASA, but also strong local searching ability of the BP algorithm. The forecasting results indicate that the proposed model yields more accurate forecasting results than the BP-NN and pure GA training NN model. Therefore, the HGASA-NN model is a promising alternative for rainfall-runoff forecasting.