Double decomposition with enhanced least-squares support vector machine to predict water level

As global climates undergo changes, the frequency of water-related disasters rises, leading to significant economic losses and safety hazards. During flood events, river water levels exhibit unpredictable fluctuations, introducing considerable noise that poses challenges for accurate prediction. A prediction of water level by using existing water level data makes a major contribution to forecasting flood. Enhanced least-squares support vector machine (ELSSVM) is utilized by integrating an additional extra bias error control term. In this study, least-squares support vector machine (LSSVM) and ELSSVM optimized by the genetic algorithm (GA) were chosen to be compared with the help of data decomposition methods to improve daily water level prediction accuracy. Double empirical mode decomposition (DEMD) will be integrated with LSSVM and ELSSVM. Thus, the models are named LSSVM-GA, ELSSVM-GA, empirical mode decomposition (EMD)-LSSVM-GA, EMD-ELSSVM-GA, DEMD-LSSVM-GA, and DEMD-ELSSVM-GA. The proposed models are used in forecasting the water level of Klang River in Sri Muda, Malaysia. The behavior proposed models are investigated and compared based on several performance metrics such as root-mean-square error (RMSE) and squared correlation coefficient (R2). The results demonstrated that the DEMD-ELSSVM-GA model outperformed the other models based on the performance analysis in forecasting the water level with RMSE = 0.2536 m and R2 = 0.8596 for testing data that indicate the forecasting accuracy.