Analysis of Mean Monthly Rainfall Runoff Data of Indian Catchments Using Dimensionless Variables by Neural Network

This paper focuses on a concept of using dimensionless variables as input and output to Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and discusses the improvement in the results in terms of various performance criteria as well as simplification of ANN structure for modeling rainfall-runoff process in certain Indian catchments. In the present work, runoff is taken as the response (output) variable while rainfall, slope, area of catchment and forest cover are taken as input parameters. The data used in this study are taken from six drainage basins in the Indian provinces of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, located in the different hydro-climatic zones. A standard statistical performance evaluation measures such as root mean square (RMSE), Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency and Correlation coefficient were employed to evaluate the performances of various models developed. The results obtained in this study indicate that ANN model using dimensionless variables were able to provide a better representation of rainfall–runoff process in comparison with the ANN models using process variables investigated in this study.