Author(s)

Weibo Chen¹, Wencheng Liu^2*, Weiche Huang^2,3, Hongming Liu²

¹National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction, Taipei city.
²Department of Civil and Disaster Prevention Engineering, National United University, Miaoli.
³Ph.D. Program in Materials and Chemical Engineering, National United University, Miaoli.

The simulation of salinity at different locations of a tidal river using physically-based hydrodynamic models is quite cumbersome because it requires many types of data, such as hydrological and hydraulic time series at boundaries, river geometry, and adjusted coefficients. Therefore, an artificial neural network (ANN) technique using a back-propagation neural network (BPNN) and a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) is adopted as an effective alternative in salinity simulation studies. The present study focuses on comparing the performance of BPNN, RBFNN, and three-dimensional hydrodynamic models as applied to a tidal estuarine system. The observed salinity data sets collected from 18 to 22 May, 16 to 22 October, and 26 to 30 October 2002 (totaling 4320 data points) were used for BPNN and RBFNN model training and for hydrodynamic model calibration. The data sets collected from 30 May to 2 June and 11 to 15 November 2002 (totaling 2592 data points) were adopted for BPNN and RBFNN model verification and for hydrodynamic model verification. The results revealed that the ANN (BPNN and RBFNN) models were capable of predicting the nonlinear time series behavior of salinity to the multiple forcing signals of water stages at different stations and freshwater input at upstream boundaries. The salinity predicted by the ANN models was better than that predicted by the physically based hydrodynamic model. This study suggests that BPNN and RBFNN models are easy-to-use modeling tools for simulating the salinity variation in a tidal estuarine system.

Salinity Variation, Artificial Neural Network, Backpropagation Algorithm, Radial Basis Function Neural Network, Three-Dimensional Hydrodynamic Model, Tidal Estuary

Chen, W. , Liu, W. , Huang, W. and Liu, H. (2017) Prediction of Salinity Variations in a Tidal Estuary Using Artificial Neural Network and Three-Dimensional Hydrodynamic Models. Computational Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering, 6, 107-128. doi: 10.4236/cweee.2017.61009.