Water Quality Assessment with Artificial Neural Network Models: Performance Comparison Between SMN, MLP and PS-ANN Methodologies

Abstract Identifying and measuring potential sources of pollution is essential for water management and pollution control. Using a range of artificial intelligence models to analyze water quality (WQ) is one of the most effective techniques for estimating water quality index (WQI). In this context, machine learning–based models are introduced to predict the WQ factors of Southeastern Black Sea Basin. The data comprising monthly samples of different WQ factors were collected for 12 months at eight locations of the Türkiye region in Southeastern Black Sea. The traditional evaluation with WQI of surface water was calculated as average (i.e. good WQ). Single multiplicative neuron (SMN) model, multilayer perceptron (MLP) and pi-sigma artificial neural networks (PS-ANNs) were used to predict WQI, and the accuracy of the proposed algorithms were compared. SMN model and PS-ANNs were used for WQ prediction modeling for the first time in the literature. According to the results obtained from the proposed ANN models, it was found to provide a highly reliable modeling approach that allows capturing the nonlinear structure of complex time series and thus to generate more accurate predictions. The results of the analyses demonstrate the applicability of the proposed pi-sigma model instead of using other computational methods to predict WQ both in particular and other surface water resources in general.