Advanced Machine Learning Techniques to Improve Hydrological Prediction: A Comparative Analysis of Streamflow Prediction Models

The management of water resources depends heavily on hydrological prediction, and advances in machine learning (ML) present prospects for improving predictive modelling capabilities. This study investigates the use of a variety of widely used machine learning algorithms, such as CatBoost, ElasticNet, k-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Lasso, Light Gradient Boosting Machine Regressor (LGBM), Linear Regression (LR), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Random Forest (RF), Ridge, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD), and the Extreme Gradient Boosting Regression Model (XGBoost), to predict the river inflow of the Garudeshwar watershed, a key element in planning for flood control and water supply. The substantial engineering feature used in the study, which incorporates temporal lag and contextual data based on Indian seasons, leads it distinctiveness. The study concludes that the CatBoost method demonstrated remarkable performance across various metrics, including Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and R-squared (R2) values, for both training and testing datasets. This was accomplished by an in-depth investigation and model comparison. In contrast to CatBoost, XGBoost and LGBM demonstrated a higher percentage of data points with prediction errors exceeding 35% for moderate inflow numbers above 10,000. CatBoost established itself as a reliable method for hydrological time-series modelling, easily managing both categorical and continuous variables, and thereby greatly enhancing prediction accuracy. The results of this study highlight the value and promise of widely used machine learning algorithms in hydrology and offer valuable insights for academics and industry professionals.