Middle- and Long-Term Streamflow Forecasting and Uncertainty Analysis Using Lasso-DBN-Bootstrap Model

Middle-term and long-term streamflow forecasting is of great significance for water resources planning and management, cascade reservoirs optimal operation, agriculture and hydro-power generation. In this work, a framework was proposed which integrates least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (lasso), DBN and bootstrap to improve the performance and the stability of streamflow forecasting with the lead-time of one month. Lasso helps to screen the appropriate predictors for the DBN model, and the DBN model simulates the complex relationship between the selection predictors and streamflow, and then bootstrap with the DBN model contributes to evaluate the uncertainty. The Three-River Headwaters Region (TRHR) was taken as a case study. The results indicated that lasso-DBN-bootstrap model produced significantly more accurate forecasting results than the other three models and provides reliable information on the forecasting uncertainty, which will be valuable for water resources management and planning.