MLP-based drought forecasting in different climatic regions

Water resources management is a complex task and is further compounded by droughts. This study applies a multilayer perceptron network optimized using Levenberg–Marquardt (MLP) training algorithm with a tangent sigmoid activation function to forecast quantitative values of standardized precipitation index (SPI) of drought at five synoptic stations in Iran. The study stations are located in different climatic regions based on De Martonne aridity index. In this study, running series of total precipitation corresponding to 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24?months were used and the corresponding SPIs were calculated: SPI3, SPI6, SPI9, SPI12, and SPI24. The multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) for SPIs with the 1-month lead time forecasting, were tested and validated. Four different input vectors were considered during network development. In the first model, MLP constructed by importing antecedent SPI with 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-month time lags and antecedent precipitation with 1- and 2-month time lags (MLP1). Addition of antecedent North Atlantic Oscillation or antecedent Southern Oscillation Index with 1-month time lag or both of them to MLP1 led to MLP2, MLP3, and MLP4, respectively. The MLP models were evaluated using the root mean square error (RMSE) and the coefficient of determination (R ²). The results showed that MLP4 had a higher prediction efficiency than the other MLPs. The more satisfactory results of RMSE and R ² values of MLP4 for 1-month lead time for validation phase were equal to 0.35 and 0.92, respectively. Also, results indicated that MLPs can forecast SPI24 and SPI12 more accurately than the other SPIs.