Genetic programming for retrieving missing information in wave records along the west coast of India

Instruments such as floating wave rider buoys provide wave data over a long period in a continuous manner; however such information invariably contains missing values resulting from the instrument and telemetry system that is damaged, malfunctioning or otherwise non-operational. The problem of restoring missing wave heights is attempted in this paper using one of the latest soft computing tools, namely, Genetic Programming (GP). The gaps in the time series of significant wave heights collected at every 3 h for a period of four years from January 2000 to December 2003 are filled in at six selected buoy locations along the west coast of India. The performance of GP was judged in terms of the error statistics of bias, root mean square error, correlation coefficient and scatter index. The methodology demonstrated reliable results with fairly good overall agreement between the restored wave records and actual measurements.