Prediction of Water-Level in the Urmia Lake Using the Extreme Learning Machine Approach

Predicting the dynamics of water-level in lakes plays a vital role in navigation, water resources planning and catchment management. In this paper, the Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) approach was used to predict the daily water-level in the Urmia Lake. Daily water-level data from the Urmia Lake in northwest of Iran were used to train, test and validate the employed models. Results showed that the ELM approach can accurately forecast the water-level in the Urmia Lake. Outcomes from the ELM model were also compared with those of genetic programming (GP) and artificial neural networks (ANNs). It was found that the ELM technique outperforms GP and ANN in predicting water-level in the Urmia Lake. It also can learn the relation between the water-level and its influential variables much faster than the GP and ANN. Overall, the results show that the ELM approach can be used to predict dynamics of water-level in lakes.