Flood prediction using Time Series Data Mining

SummaryThis paper describes a novel approach to river flood prediction using Time Series Data Mining which combines chaos theory and data mining to characterize and predict events in complex, nonperiodic and chaotic time series. Geophysical phenomena, including earthquakes, floods and rainfall, represent a class of nonlinear systems termed chaotic, in which the relationships between variables in a system are dynamic and disproportionate, however completely deterministic. Chaos theory provides a structured explanation for irregular behavior and anomalies in systems that are not inherently stochastic. While nonlinear approaches such as Artificial Neural Networks, Hidden Markov Models and Nonlinear Prediction are useful in forecasting of daily discharge values in a river, the focus of these approaches is on forecasting magnitudes of future discharge values rather than the prediction of floods. The described Time Series Data Mining methodology focuses on the prediction of events where floods constitute the events in a river daily discharge time series. The methodology is demonstrated using data collected at the St. Louis gauging station located on the Mississippi River in the USA. Results associated with the impact of earliness of prediction and the acceptable risk-level vs. prediction accuracy are presented.