Forecasting Drought Using Multilayer Perceptron Artificial Neural Network Model
This work addresses drought prediction for water resource management in Pakistan, but it is incremental as it applies an existing MLPNN method to new data.
The authors tackled drought forecasting by applying a multilayer perceptron neural network (MLPNN) to predict the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) for 17 stations in Pakistan, finding that MLPNN shows potential based on performance metrics like MAE, R, and RMSE.
These days human beings are facing many environmental challenges due to frequently occurring drought hazards. It may have an effect on the countrys environment, the community, and industries. Several adverse impacts of drought hazard are continued in Pakistan, including other hazards. However, early measurement and detection of drought can provide guidance to water resources management for employing drought mitigation policies. In this paper, we used a multilayer perceptron neural network (MLPNN) algorithm for drought forecasting. We applied and tested MLPNN algorithm on monthly time series data of Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) for seventeen climatological stations located in Northern Area and KPK (Pakistan). We found that MLPNN has potential capability for SPEI drought forecasting based on performance measures (i.e., Mean Average Error (MAE), the coefficient of correlation R, and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). Water resources and management planner can take necessary action in advance (e.g., in water scarcity areas) by using MLPNN model as part of their decision making.