Approaches for the short-term prediction of natural daily streamflows using hybrid machine learning enhanced with grey wolf optimization

This paper presents the development of hybrid machine learning models to forecast the natural flows of water bodies. Five models were considered under the analysis: extreme gradient boosting (XGB), extreme learning machine (ELM), support vector regression (SVR), elastic net linear model (EN), and multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS). The grey wolf optimization algorithm (GWO) optimized all of the models’ internal parameters. A feature selection approach was embedded in the hybrid model to reduce the number of input variables. The hybrid model performed the forecasts considering one, three, five, and seven days ahead on data collected from Cahora Bassa dam, Mozambique. In the experiments conducted in this paper, XGB outperformed EN, ELM, MARS, and SVR, presenting lower prediction error and uncertainty. The proposed XGB model arises as an alternative to help with flow prediction, which is crucial for hydroelectric power plant activity.