Artificial neural network to translate offshore satellite wave data to coastal locations

Owing to the spatial averaging involved in satellite sensing, use of observations so collected is often restricted to offshore regions. This paper discusses a technique to obtain significant wave heights at a specified coastal site from their values gathered by a satellite at deeper offshore locations. The technique is based on the approach of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) of Radial Basis Function (RBF) and Feed-forward Back-propagation (FFBP) type. The satellite-sensed data of significant wave height; average wave period and the wind speed were given as input to the network in order to obtain significant wave heights at a coastal site situated along the west coast of India. Qualitative as well as quantitative comparison of the network output with target observations showed usefulness of the selected networks in such an application vis-à-vis simpler techniques like statistical regression. The basic FFBP network predicted the higher waves more correctly although such a network was less attractive from the point of overall accuracy. Unlike satellite observations collection of buoy data is costly and hence, it is generally resorted to fewer locations and for a smaller period of time. As shown in this study the network can be trained with samples of buoy data and can be further used for routine wave forecasting at coastal locations based on more permanent flow of satellite observations.