Linear and nonlinear modeling for simultaneous prediction of dissolved oxygen and biochemical oxygen demand of the surface water — A case study

The paper describes linear and nonlinear modeling for simultaneous prediction of the dissolved oxygen (DO) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) levels in the river water using the set of independent measured variables. Partial least squares (PLS2) regression and feed forward back propagation artificial neural networks (FFBP ANNs) modeling methods were applied to predict the DO and BOD levels using eleven input variables measured monthly in the river water at eight different sites over a period of ten years. The performance of the models was assessed through the root mean squared error (RMSE), the bias, the standard error of prediction (SEP), the coefficient of determination (R2), the Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency (Ef), and the accuracy factor (Af), computed from the measured and model-predicted values of the dependent variables (DO, BOD). Goodness of the model fit to the data was also evaluated through the relationship between the residuals and the model predicted values of DO and BOD, respectively. Although, the model predicted values of DO and BOD by both the linear (PLS2) and nonlinear (ANN) models were in good agreement with their respective measured values in the river water, the nonlinear model (ANN) performed relatively better than the linear one. Relative importance and contribution of the input variables to the identified ANN model was evaluated through the partitioning approach. The developed models can be used as tool for the water quality prediction.