Soft-Computing Methodologies for Precipitation Estimation: A Case Study

The current paper presents an investigation of the accuracy of soft-computing techniques in precipitation estimation. The monthly precipitation data from 29 synoptic stations in Serbia from 1946 to 2012 are used as a case study. Despite a number of mathematical functions having been proposed for modeling precipitation estimation, the models still have disadvantages such as being very demanding in terms of calculation time. Soft computing can be used as an alternative to the analytical approach, as it offers advantages such as no required knowledge of internal system parameters, compact solutions for multivariable problems, and fast calculation. Because precipitation prediction is a crucial problem, a process which simulates precipitation with two soft-computing techniques was constructed and presented in this paper, namely, adaptive neurofuzzy inference (ANFIS) and support vector regression (SVR). In the current study, polynomial, linear, and radial basis function (RBF) are applied as the kernel function of the SVR to estimate the probability of precipitation. The performance of the proposed optimizers is confirmed with the simulation results. The SVR results are also compared with the ANFIS results. According to the experimental results, enhanced predictive accuracy and capability of generalization can be achieved with the ANFIS approach compared to SVR estimation. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed optimization strategies.