Available online at www.sciencedirect.

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Expert Systems
with Applications
Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 14151421
www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

Optimized scenario for rainfall forecasting using genetic

algorithm coupled with articial neural network
M. Nasseri
b

a,b,*

, K. Asghari c, M.J. Abedini

a
Faculty of Engineering, Shiraz University, Iran
Department of Water and Environmental Engineering, Sazeh Pardazi Co. Engineering, Iran
c
Department of Civil Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran
d
Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Shiraz University, Iran

Abstract
Rainfall forecasting plays many important role in water resources studies such as river training works and design of ood warning
systems. Recent advancement in articial intelligence and in particular techniques aimed at converting input to output for highly nonlinear, non-convex and dimensionalized processes such as rainfall eld, provide an alternative approach for developing rainfall forecasting model. Articial neural networks (ANNs), which perform a nonlinear mapping between inputs and outputs, are such a technique.
Current literatures on articial neural networks show that the selection of network architecture and its ecient training procedure are
major obstacles for their daily usage. In this paper, feed-forward type networks will be developed to simulate the rainfall eld and a socalled back propagation (BP) algorithm coupled with genetic algorithm (GA) will be used to train and optimize the networks. The technique will be implemented to forecast rainfall for a number of times using rainfall hyetograph of recording rain gauges in the Upper
Parramatta catchment in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Results of the study showed the structuring of ANN network with
the input parameter selection, when coupled with GA, performed better compared to similar work of using ANN alone.
2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Rainfall forecasting; Articial neural networks; Genetic algorithms; Input determination

1. Introduction
Rainfall forecasting is one of the most dicult and
important processes of the hydrologic cycle. This is largely
related to the variability it displays over a wide range of
scales both in time and space. Flash ooding, being a product of intense rainfall, is a life-threatening phenomenon.
Developing a rainfall forecasting and ood warning system
for typical catchments is not considered a simple task. Both
internal and external characteristics of rainfall eld depend
on many factors including: pressure, temperature, wind
speed and its direction, meteorological characteristics of
the catchments and so on. Although a physically-based
*
Corresponding author. Address: Faculty of Engineering, Shiraz
University, Iran.
E-mail addresses: mm_nasseri@yahoo.com (M. Nasseri), kasghari@
cc.iut.ac.ir (K. Asghari), abedini@shirazu.ac.ir (M.J. Abedini).

0957-4174/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2007.08.033

approach for rainfall forecasting has several advantages,

given the short time scale, the small catchments area, and
the massive costs associated with collecting the required
meteorological data, it is not a feasible alternative in most
cases because it involves many variables which are interconnected in a very complicated way. An approach based
on statistical mechanics which attempts to model the pattern of the underlying physical processes manifested in
the observed rainfall data in a lumped articial neural networks (ANNs) is an ecient alternative (Govindaraju,
2000a). This complexity and nonlinearity inherent in rainfall pattern makes it attractive to try neural network for
simulation and forecasting purposes. An ANN with
moderate number of hidden layer(s) is capable of approximating any smooth function to any desired degree of
accuracy. In addition, ANNs are computationally robust,
having the ability to learn and generalize from examples
to produce meaningful solutions to problems even when

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M. Nasseri et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 14151421

the input data contain errors or are incomplete. The

application of an ANN, however, involves a complicated
development process. If carelessly used, it can easily learn
irrelevant information (noises) in the system (over-tting).
Such a model might be doing well in predicting past incidents, but unable to predict future events. Govindaraju
(2000a, 2000b) reported a number of studies which have
used ANNs to forecast rainfall over a short time interval.
In the literature, French, Krajewski, and Cuykendal
(1992) developed the rst simulation scheme, whereby synthetically generated rainfall storms were used to both calibrate and validate ANN models. The results of their
investigation indicate that an ANN is quite capable of capturing the complex relationship associated with spatiotemporal evolution of rainfall inherent in a complex rainfall
simulation model. Tohma and Igata (1994) used three-layer
ANNs to predict rainfall elds based on visible and infrared remote sensing cloud images. An ANN model to forecast summer monsoon rainfall over India was developed by
Navone and Ceccatto (1994). They used a mixed and
hybrid type of ANNs. Hsu, Gupta, Sorooshian, and Gao
(1996, 1997) have developed a modied counter propagation ANN for transforming satellite infrared images to
rainfall rates over a catchment. Their approach was like
the one utilized by Rizzo and Dougherty (1994), in that
both used a Kohonen hidden layer and a Grossberg output
layer in the three-layer structure.
Kuligowski and Barros (1998) have presented an ANN
approach for short term rainfall forecasting. Their model
used feed-forward neural network (FFNN) architecture
with upper atmospheric wind direction and antecedent
rainfall data from a rain gauge network to generate a
06 h precipitation (short term rainfall) forecast for a target location. Luk, Ball, and Sharma (2000, 2001) have
developed and presented a scheme for rainfall eld modeling. They used the recorded rainfall as time series to feed
the models. By using rainfall series events from the network of rain gauges as input(s), they have predicted the
depth of precipitation in the next time step in a target rain
gauge. Modication of their modeling and the basin used
by them is the core of this paper. Along the same line of
research, Ramirez, Velhob, and Ferreira (2005) developed
an analysis for two statistical models for rainfall forecast
in the Sao Paulo State, Brazil. It was concluded that
better performance of ANN model compared to multiple
linear regression (MLR) model can be achieved especially
with nonlinear phenomenon such as rain forecasting.
Importance of input determination for ANN models studied by Bowden, Dandy, and Maier (2005a, 2005b) and
two methodologies, namely partial mutual information
(PMI) and self-organizing map (SOM) integrated with a
genetic algorithm and general regression neural network,
tested with synthetic data were presented. The results indicated improvement in input selection by PMI as it was
able to exclude all insignicant inputs. Compare to
PMI, SOM determines the inputs in two steps, rst to
reduce the input dimensionality and then to select the

subset of important model inputs using the GA and the

regression network. And the last in the literature, Lin
and Chen (2005) have developed a two hidden layers
neural network to forecast typhoon rainfall in a river
basin in northern Taiwan. The eect of nearby stations
is considered for advancing the model performance. In
order to detect the invaluable nearby stations and improve
the network performance a semivariogram is also applied.
Results indicate that applying too much spatial rainfall
information cannot improve the models prediction ability, because the inclusion of irrelevant information can
add noise on the network and reduce the model
performance.
Current literatures on ANNs show that selection of network architecture (both input selection and network architecture) and its ecient training are very time consuming,
and considered major obstacles for their day to day applications. In this paper, event-based modeling is selected as a
helpful way to be closer to online prediction. The current
article proposes a new way to improve rainfall estimation
by optimizing the network scenarios by coupling MLP with
GA. Among the most important parameters are input(s)
selection and the network weights associated with each
neuron. The eect of each rain gauge on the target station
will be analyzed by sensitivity analysis technique and the
powerful method of cross-validation will be used to monitor the over training phenomena as well.
2. Articial neural networks and genetic algorithm
ANN has been innovated as a exible mathematical
structure based on the biological functioning of the nervous system. Sarle (1994) argued that the same roots of
classical regression can be found in ANNs originally developed as a model of information storage and computing
using neuronal processes found in nature (Hykin, 1999).
The most popular type of ANN, i.e. multilayer feed-forward neural network (MFNN), the three-layer feed-forward neural network (TFNN), is shown in Fig. 1. ANN
training is performed to determine the weights associated
with the network in an optimal way using an appropriate
algorithm. Many researchers have reported diculties in
training the network parameters caused by parameter
interdependence, parameter insensitivity and multi-local
optima (Hykin, 1999). Montana and Davis (1988) and
Maniezzo (1994) applied GA in training a BPNN. In their
works, GA determined the best topology of ANNs. ANN
has to go through three phases for its operational application. In the rst phase, a subset of inputoutput dataset
S 1 x1 ; d 1 ; x2 ; d 2 ; . . . ; xp1 ; d p1  is used to train the
networks (calibration phase) while in the second phase,
another subset of inputoutput dataset S 2 x01 ; d 01 ;
x02 ; d 02 ; . . . ; x0p2 ; d 0p2  is used to validate the calibrated networks. Imrie, Durucan, and Korre (2000) suggested to
have an intervening phase, so-called the testing phase,
whereby a third subset of dataset S 3 x001 ; d 001 ;
x002 ; d 002 ; . . . ; x00p3 ; d 00p3  is used to guide the network to test

M. Nasseri et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 14151421

1417

Fig. 1. The structure of a three-layer feed-forward articial neural network.

over training (over generalization) phenomena during

training phase. In this case, ANN training exercise becomes
an unconstrained, nonlinear optimization problem in the
weight space, and an appropriate algorithm may be used
to solve this problem. In the ANN testing phase, the objective is to determine the suitability of the weighting coecients with regard to over-tting process.
GA is considered to be a heuristic, stochastic, combinatorial, optimization technique based on the biological process of natural evolution developed by Holland (1975).
Goldberg (1989) and Michalewicz (1992) discussed the
mechanism and robustness of GA in solving nonlinear
optimization problems. Three heuristic processes of reproduction, crossover, and mutation are applied probabilistically to discrete decision variables that are coded into
binary or real numbers strings. In this article, GA will be
utilized eectively to determine the weights corresponding
to various connections.

4. Application
Recording precipitation gauges from the Upper Parramatta River basin were chosen for this study. The catchment
is located in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia
(Fig. 2) with a catchment size of about 112 km2. Within
the catchment, the land use is typical of urban environment
with a mix of commercial, agricultural and parkland areas.
In the study area, there are fourteen recording rain gauges.
The data set had a length of four years consisting of eventwise recording precipitation from 1996 to 2000. The temporal resolution of rainfall measurement for all fourteen rain

3. Sensitivity analysis
Sensitivity analysis should be considered an essential
pace to all mathematical-based modeling. The main advantage of performing sensitivity analysis is to identify sensitive parameters or processes associated with model
output (Skaggs & Barry, 1996). In ANN modeling, like
any mathematical-based model, sensitivity analysis provides feedback as to which input parameters are the most
signicant. It has to be emphasized that computation of
sensitivity coecients in a typical inputoutput model is
not a trivial task as we are not faced with a closed form
function, but a complex procedure to convert input to output. For the networks which are developed in this research,
sensitivity coecients are computed by using mean value of
each parameter as a base value, having a bound dened by
standard deviation.

Fig. 2. Location of the study area and positions of 14 recording rain

gauges, after Luk et al. (2000).

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M. Nasseri et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 14151421

Table 1
Parameter and comparative results of various models

Table 4
Results of sensitivity analysis for models 6 and 7

Models

Time step (min)

Pc%

Pm%

MSE

NMSE

R2

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

5
10
10
15
15
15
15

92
96
94
96
94
96
96

1.2
1.4
1.2
1.2
1.2
1.2
1.2

0.007
0.020
0.030
0.009
0.010
0.121
0.018

0.161
0.351
0.400
0.280
0.310
0.002
0.360

0.84
0.66
0.74
0.71
0.7
0.99
0.66

Models

Previous lags

6
7

1.24
0.32

0.23
0.18

0.08
0.1

0
0

Cumulative Rainfall Prediction

0.8

gauges is 5-min interval. After doing some sort of preliminary exploratory data analysis, a total of 26 storm events
were selected keeping zeros among data sets for synchronization purposes. Eighteen of the events were used for training, four events for validation and the other four for
testing. Due to chaotic behavior of rainfall eld, some sort
of transformation has been implemented to reduce the variance of variation, in order to achieve better performance
and faster convergence in training procedure. The transformation, y = 0.5Log10(x + 1), was used for the input data
(Luk et al., 2000, 2001); where x is the original rainfall data
and y is the data after transformation.

0.7
0.6

Computed

0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Observed

5. Discussion of test results

Fig. 3a. Computed versus observed values for model 6.

Rainfall is illustrative of a nonlinear process and its

forecasting with relatively limited data makes it very complex phenomenon. To overcome part of this complexity in
modeling the rainfall, an ANN procedure (MFNN) inte-

grated with an evolutionary optimization method such as

GA was applied. The model input(s), the most eective
neighborhood stations and their rainfall lag times, will be

Table 2
Results of sensitivity analysis for network modeling by discrete data
Models

Sensitivity of target station to stations Nos.

7251

7253

7255

7257

7259

7261

7263

7265

7267

7269

7273

7283

7285

7299

First lag
1
2
3
4
5

0.01
0.0
0.0
0.00

0.00
0.0
0.04
0.0

0.05
0.15
0.19
0.1
0.0

0.01
0.0
0.0
0.07
0.08

0.06
0.12
0.1
0.12
0.15

0.06
0.2
0.19
0.15
0.1

0.01
0.05
0.09
0.0

0.05
0.0
0.11
0.09
0.11

0.01
0.0
0.0
0.01

0.05
0.06
0.18
0.04
0.0

0.03
0.0
0.0
0.03

0.0
0.06
0.09
0.0

0.05
0.09
0.16
0.1
0.09

0.02
0.0
0.0
0.13
0.14

Second lag
1
2
3
4
5

0.02
0.0
0.03
0.06
0.0

0.02
0.0
0.0
0.01
0.0

0.0
0.0
0.05
0.02
0.0

0.0
0.06
0.0
0.0

0.00
0.0
0.0
0.06
0.0

0.02
0.0
0.03
0.00
0.02

0.02
0.02
0.06
0.05
0.0

0.03
0.0
0.0
0.0

0.02
0.1
0.04
0.0

0.03
0.0
0.0
0.0

0.02
0.02
0.0
0.0

0.0
0.0
0.05
0.0

0.00
0.0
0.0
0.0

0.02
0.0
0.02
0.0

7285

7299

Table 3
Results of mean sensitive coecients (SC) for model 4 rank the most eective station
Stations Nos.
7251

7253

7255

Mean of SC

0.002

0.05

Distance-ranked with respect to

target station

7257

7259

7261

7263

7265

0.08

0.14

0.13

0.1

13

7267
0.003
12

7269

7273

7283

0.02

0.02

0.09
10

0.14
11

M. Nasseri et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 14151421

Discrete Rainfall Prediction
0.3

0.25

Computed

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Observed

Fig. 3b. Computed versus observed values for model 7.

derived from optimized ANNs by GA to achieve an ecient input conguration for minimum error. Basically,
by detecting eective inputs, the best input combination(s)
for intelligence prediction will appear. Delineation of optimum lag time(s) at a particular location, investigation of
the extend to which inclusion of spatial information might
improve network performance, and assessment of performance indicator with regard to application of cumulative
versus discrete data were addressed in this paper as well.
Seven cases of simulation models have been selected to
illustrate the performance of the proposed technique. These
runs dier from one another mainly on the genetic algorithm parameters (i.e. Pm and Pc), surrounding rain gauges
used, number of time lags associated with each rain gauge,
temporal resolution of rainfall events, and data type
(cumulative versus discrete). The probability of mutation
(Pm) varied, traditionally, between 1.2% and 1.4%, while

1419

crossover probability (Pc) varies between 92% and 96%.

Evaluation of network performance was achieved through
computation of three good tness criteria, namely, mean
square error (MSE), normal mean square error (NMSE)
and coecient of determination (R2). Table 1 summarizes
various experimental runs based on GA parameters. For
the rst ve models (data in discrete form), two previous
lags of all surrounding recording rain gauges are used to
forecast current rainfall depth at the rain gauge of interest
(Station No. 7261). In models 6 and 7, only rainfall information from the target station, with several subsequent
lags, were used as input data. According to Bowden et al.
(2005a), mathematical sensitivity analysis is implemented
to validate selected input parameters with GA.
Table 2 presents the result of sensitivity analysis for the
rst ve models using rainfall data from all rain gauges
during the training phase as input parameter. Zeros in
Table 2 indicate gauges in which the GA algorithm disqualied them either by generating an optimized topology or
left them out based on error minimization as sources of
input data because of their ineectiveness to predict current
rainfall of the target station. The sensitivity coecients
indicated by - in the 5th model are those eliminated manually based on the results obtained in previous model
(model four) and they include those gauges with coecients of small values (indication of ineectiveness) in order
to reduce the execution time of the model.
Table 2 also reveals that while the rainfall data from the
rst lag appeared to be relatively sensitive to the target rain
gauge, the data from the second lag is almost very ineective in predicting the target rainfall. Another important
result drawn from Table 2 is that when the time resolution
gradually increased in the simulation model, the most eective stations in predicting the target rainfall would appear.
Besides the target station itself, stations 7259, 7265, 7285
and 7299 have the major contribution on forecasting and
they are not necessarily the closest ones to target station,

Cumulative Rainfall Prediction

0.8
0.7

Elevation (m)

0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
Observed

0.2

Computed

0.1
0
1

51

101

151

201

251

301

351

401

451

501

Time Lag (Min)

Fig. 4a. Estimated and observed events in time series form for experimental runs #6.

551

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M. Nasseri et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 14151421

Discrete Rainfall Prediction
0.45
0.4
0.35
Observed

Elevation (m)

0.3

Computed

0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
1

101

201

301

401

501

Time Lag (Min)

Fig. 4b. Estimated and observed events in time series form for experimental runs #7.

unique input vector that best represents the underlying processes. This was proved with an application of PACF analysis, rst applied by Sudheer, Gosain, and Ramasastri
(2002), with the data series used in this problem in delineating a unique input vector that best represents the underlying processes. Fig. 5a and 5b shows the autocorrelation
plot for the recording rain gauge of interest (i.e. 7261 station) along with 95% and 99% condence limits considering data in cumulative and discrete mode. Careful
analysis of Tables 2 and 4 clearly conrm the fact that
the rst lag has a major contribution, particularly in the
model 6, and other lags fall outside the condence interval.
This implies that this tool can be used eectively to delineate optimum time lag and consequently network structure
especially in model with cumulative data type.
1.2
PACF Coefficient
Cofidence Limit 99%

Confidence Limit 95%

Correlation Coefficient

as Luk et al. (2000) concluded in their paper. This is also

observed in Table 3 particularly for the model 4, when
the most eective stations are those in which they rank 7,
10, 11, and 13 distance-wise with respect to target station.
The sensitivity coecients are average value of training,
validation and testing phases.
Table 4 provides the sensitivity coecients of models 6
and 7 using cumulative and discrete data respectively. In
both models, networks with ve lags were attempted.
Cumulative-type data as input to the ANN model has signicant advantage over the discrete-type data, since both
the NMSE and R2 error measures increase in model 7.
The results from both models validate the fact that the rst
two lags have a major contribution to forecast the current
rainfall depth at the station of interest, implying short
memory of rainfall in this region. Also, the convergence
of neural network model deteriorated substantially by
using the rainfall information further than the rst two
lags.
Fig. 3a and 3b shows scatter plots of the forecast versus
observed rainfall for models 6 and 7. These plots highlight
the superiority of the cumulative over discrete data when
they are used as input parameters. Accordingly, Fig. 4a
and 4b show the time series of rainfall forecast by the
two models for four dierent rainfall events. Once again,
the cumulative data captures and forecasts the timing
and magnitude of observed rainfall in a better way compared to discrete data.
Although in previous studies such as the one conducted
by Luk et al. (2000, 2001), indicated that the rst two lags
have major contribution in forecasting the rainfall in
selected station, this research clearly pointed out that more
accurate and detailed information can be obtained after
delineating the eective lag times with respect to the target
station. Correlation of the lag times can be determined
through a statistical analysis such as partial auto-correlation function (PACF) of the data series in delineating a

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0

Time Lag

Fig. 5a. Autocorrelation function for cumulative data (model 6).

M. Nasseri et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 14151421

0.8
PACF Coefficient

0.7
Confidenc Limit 99%

Correlation Coefficient

0.6

Confidenc Limit 95%

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
1

Time Lag

Fig. 5b. Autocorrelation function for discrete data (model 7).

6. Conclusion
The focus of this paper was to apply optimized ANN
using GA for short term rainfall forecasting by determination of suitable input parameters and designing the best
network architecture. The study reported in this article
has led to the conclusion that MLP type network coupled
with GA, consistently performed better compared to
MLP type network alone. Compare to previous study
(Luk et al., 2000), number of eective rain stations as input
parameters have been decreased in order to forecast a rain
target and reduced the model noise. Furthermore, the integration of the GA method with ANN indicates an
improvement in reducing the order of errors compare to
the ANN model alone. Considering the use of dierent
time lags of surrounding gauge stations, through the use
of sensitivity analysis along with the special correlation
function, an eective number of time lags were identied
which are also useful tools in reducing the input parameters. Also, due to chaotic nature of rainfall and short time
memory, it was observed that number of eective input stations decreases as time steps increases. Finally, caused by
nature of integration, cumulative data could lead to highly
better statistical performance in rainfall forecasting compared to discrete data type.
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