Monitoring diel dissolved oxygen dynamics through integrating wavelet denoising and temporal neural networks

A Review of the Artificial Neural Network Models for Water Quality Prediction

Water quality prediction plays an important role in environmental monitoring, ecosystem sustainability, and aquaculture. Traditional prediction methods cannot capture the nonlinear and non-stationarity of water quality well. In recent years, the rapid development of artificial neural networks (ANNs) has made them a hotspot in water quality prediction. We have conducted extensive investigation and analysis on ANN-based water quality prediction from three aspects, namely feedforward, recurrent, and hybrid architectures. Based on 151 papers published from 2008 to 2019, 23 types of water quality variables were highlighted. The variables were primarily collected by the sensor, followed by specialist experimental equipment, such as a UV-visible photometer, as there is no mature sensor for measurement at present. Five different output strategies, namely Univariate-Input-Itself-Output, Univariate-Input-Other-Output, Multivariate-Input-Other(multi), Multivariate-Input-Itself-Other-Output, and Multivariate-Input-Itself-Other (multi)-Output, are summarized. From results of the review, it can be concluded that the ANN models are capable of dealing with different modeling problems in rivers, lakes, reservoirs, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), groundwater, ponds, and streams. The results of many of the review articles are useful to researchers in prediction and similar fields. Several new architectures presented in the study, such as recurrent and hybrid structures, are able to improve the modeling quality of future development.

Spatial Forecasting of Dissolved Oxygen Concentration in the Eastern Black Sea Basin, Turkey

The aim of this study was to model, as well as monitor and assess the surface water quality in the Eastern Black Sea (EBS) Basin stream, Turkey. The water-quality indicators monitored monthly for the seven streams were water temperature (WT), pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), and electrical conductivity (EC), as well as luminescent dissolved oxygen (LDO) concentration and saturation. Based on an 18-month data monitoring, the surface water quality variation was spatially and temporally evaluated with reference to the Turkish Surface Water Quality Regulation. First, the teaching–learning based optimization (TLBO) algorithm and conventional regression analysis (CRA) were applied to three different regression forms, i.e., exponential, power, and linear functions, to predict LDO concentrations. Then, the multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) method was employed and three performance measures, namely, mean absolute error (MAE), root means square error (RMSE), and Nash Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency (NSCE) were used to evaluate the performances of the MARS, TLBO, and CRA methods. The monitoring results revealed that all streams showed the same trend in that lower WT values in the winter months resulted in higher LDO concentrations, while higher WT values in summer led to lower LDO concentrations. Similarly, autumn, which presented the higher TDS concentrations brought about higher EC values, while spring, which presented the lower TDS concentrations gave rise to lower EC values. It was concluded that the water quality of the streams in the EBS basin was high-quality water in terms of the parameters monitored in situ, of which the LDO concentration varied from 9.13 to 10.12 mg/L in summer and from 12.31 to 13.26 mg/L in winter. When the prediction accuracies of the three models were compared, it was seen that the MARS method provided more successful results than the other methods. The results of the TLBO and the CRA methods were very close to each other. The RMSE, MAE, and NSCE values were 0.2599 mg/L, 0.2125 mg/L, and 0.9645, respectively, for the best MARS model, while these values were 0.4167 mg/L, 0.3068 mg/L, and 0.9086, respectively, for the best TLBO and CRA models. In general, the LDO concentration could be successfully predicted using the MARS method with various input combinations of WT, EC, and pH variables.

A Methodology for the Fast Comparison of Streamwater Diurnal Cycles at Two Monitoring Points

There are numerous streamwater parameters that exhibit a diurnal cycle. However, the shape of this cycle has a huge variation from one parameter to another and from one monitoring point to another on the same river. Important variations also occur at the same point during some events, such as high waters. Water level, specific conductivity, dissolved oxygen, oxidation reduction potential, and pH of the Suceava River were monitored for 365 days (2018–2019, hourly sampling frequency) in order to assess the upstream-downstream changes in the diurnal cycle of these parameters, some of these changes being caused by the impact of Suceava city, which is located between the selected monitoring points. The multiresolution analysis of the maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform and the wavelet coherence analysis were combined in a flexible methodology that helped in comparing the upstream and downstream shapes of the diurnal cycle. The methodology allowed for a fast comparison of diurnal profiles during periods of high waters or baseflow. Notable changes were observed in the moments of diurnal maxima and minima.

Extreme learning machines: a new approach for modeling dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration with and without water quality variables as predictors

In this paper, several extreme learning machine (ELM) models, including standard extreme learning machine with sigmoid activation function (S-ELM), extreme learning machine with radial basis activation function (R-ELM), online sequential extreme learning machine (OS-ELM), and optimally pruned extreme learning machine (OP-ELM), are newly applied for predicting dissolved oxygen concentration with and without water quality variables as predictors. Firstly, using data from eight United States Geological Survey (USGS) stations located in different rivers basins, USA, the S-ELM, R-ELM, OS-ELM, and OP-ELM were compared against the measured dissolved oxygen (DO) using four water quality variables, water temperature, specific conductance, turbidity, and pH, as predictors. For each station, we used data measured at an hourly time step for a period of 4 years. The dataset was divided into a training set (70%) and a validation set (30%). We selected several combinations of the water quality variables as inputs for each ELM model and six different scenarios were compared. Secondly, an attempt was made to predict DO concentration without water quality variables. To achieve this goal, we used the year numbers, 2008, 2009, etc., month numbers from (1) to (12), day numbers from (1) to (31) and hour numbers from (00:00) to (24:00) as predictors. Thirdly, the best ELM models were trained using validation dataset and tested with the training dataset. The performances of the four ELM models were evaluated using four statistical indices: the coefficient of correlation (R), the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), the root mean squared error (RMSE), and the mean absolute error (MAE). Results obtained from the eight stations indicated that: (i) the best results were obtained by the S-ELM, R-ELM, OS-ELM, and OP-ELM models having four water quality variables as predictors; (ii) out of eight stations, the OP-ELM performed better than the other three ELM models at seven stations while the R-ELM performed the best at one station. The OS-ELM models performed the worst and provided the lowest accuracy; (iii) for predicting DO without water quality variables, the R-ELM performed the best at seven stations followed by the S-ELM in the second place and the OP-ELM performed the worst with low accuracy; (iv) for the final application where training ELM models with validation dataset and testing with training dataset, the OP-ELM provided the best accuracy using water quality variables and the R-ELM performed the best at all eight stations without water quality variables. Fourthly, and finally, we compared the results obtained from different ELM models with those obtained using multiple linear regression (MLR) and multilayer perceptron neural network (MLPNN). Results obtained using MLPNN and MLR models reveal that: (i) using water quality variables as predictors, the MLR performed the worst and provided the lowest accuracy in all stations; (ii) MLPNN was ranked in the second place at two stations, in the third place at four stations, and finally, in the fourth place at two stations, (iii) for predicting DO without water quality variables, MLPNN is ranked in the second place at five stations, and ranked in the third, fourth, and fifth places in the remaining three stations, while MLR was ranked in the last place with very low accuracy at all stations. Overall, the results suggest that the ELM is more effective than the MLPNN and MLR for modelling DO concentration in river ecosystems.

Improving the efficiency of dissolved oxygen control using an on-line control system based on a genetic algorithm evolving FWNN software sensor

This work proposes an on-line hybrid intelligent control system based on a genetic algorithm (GA) evolving fuzzy wavelet neural network software sensor to control dissolved oxygen (DO) in an anaerobic/anoxic/oxic process for treating papermaking wastewater. With the self-learning and memory abilities of neural network, handling the uncertainty capacity of fuzzy logic, analyzing local detail superiority of wavelet transform and global search of GA, this proposed control system can extract the dynamic behavior and complex interrelationships between various operation variables. The results indicate that the reasonable forecasting and control performances were achieved with optimal DO, and the effluent quality was stable at and below the desired values in real time. Our proposed hybrid approach proved to be a robust and effective DO control tool, attaining not only adequate effluent quality but also minimizing the demand for energy, and is easily integrated into a global monitoring system for purposes of cost management.

Machine learning and statistical methods for the prediction of maximal oxygen uptake: recent advances

Maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) indicates how many milliliters of oxygen the body can consume in a state of intense exercise per minute. VO2max plays an important role in both sport and medical sciences for different purposes, such as indicating the endurance capacity of athletes or serving as a metric in estimating the disease risk of a person. In general, the direct measurement of VO2max provides the most accurate assessment of aerobic power. However, despite a high level of accuracy, practical limitations associated with the direct measurement of VO2max, such as the requirement of expensive and sophisticated laboratory equipment or trained staff, have led to the development of various regression models for predicting VO2max. Consequently, a lot of studies have been conducted in the last years to predict VO2max of various target audiences, ranging from soccer athletes, nonexpert swimmers, cross-country skiers to healthy-fit adults, teenagers, and children. Numerous prediction models have been developed using different sets of predictor variables and a variety of machine learning and statistical methods, including support vector machine, multilayer perceptron, general regression neural network, and multiple linear regression. The purpose of this study is to give a detailed overview about the data-driven modeling studies for the prediction of VO2max conducted in recent years and to compare the performance of various VO2max prediction models reported in related literature in terms of two well-known metrics, namely, multiple correlation coefficient (R) and standard error of estimate. The survey results reveal that with respect to regression methods used to develop prediction models, support vector machine, in general, shows better performance than other methods, whereas multiple linear regression exhibits the worst performance.