Modelling of evaporation from the reservoir of Yuvacik dam using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems

Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) models are proposed as an alternative approach of evaporation estimation for Yuvacik Dam. This study has three objectives: (1) to develop ANFIS models to estimate daily pan evaporation from measured meteorological data; (2) to compare the ANFIS model to the multiple linear regression (MLR) model; and (3) to evaluate the potential of ANFIS model. Various combinations of daily meteorological data, namely air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation and wind speed, are used as inputs to the ANFIS so as to evaluate the degree of effect of each of these variables on daily pan evaporation. The results of the ANFIS model are compared with MLR model. Mean square error, average absolute relative error and coefficient of determination statistics are used as comparison criteria for the evaluation of the model performances. The ANFIS technique whose inputs are solar radiation, air temperature, relative humidity and wind speed, gives mean square errors of 0.181 mm, average absolute relative errors of 9.590% mm, and determination coefficient of 0.958 for Yuvacik Dam station, respectively. Based on the comparisons, it was found that the ANFIS technique could be employed successfully in modelling evaporation process from the available climatic data.