Prediction of river suspended sediment load using machine learning models and geo-morphometric parameters (original) (raw)

Arabian Journal of Geosciences

Estimating sediment load of rivers is one of the major problems in river engineering that has been using various data mining algorithms and variables. It is desirable to obtain accurate estimates of sediment load while using techniques that limit computational intensity when datasets are large. This study investigates the usefulness of geo-morphometric factors and machine learning (ML) models for predicting suspended sediment load (SSL) in several river basins in Lorestan and Gilan, Iran. Six ML models, namely, multiple linear regression (MLR), artificial neural networks (ANN), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), Gaussian processes (GP), support vector machines (SVM), and evolutionary support vector machines (ESVM), were evaluated for estimating minimum and average SSL for the study regions. Geo-morphometric parameters and river discharge data were utilized as the main predictors in modeling process. In addition, an attribute reduction technique was applied to decrease the algorithm complexit...