Hybrid deep learning and optimized variational mode decomposition for point-interval runoff prediction

Runoff prediction is crucial for water resource allocation and hydropower planning. To address low accuracy and uncertainty in runoff forecasting, this study proposes a framework integrating the Information Acquisition Optimizer (IAO), Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD), Convolutional Neural Network-Support Vector Machine (CNN-SVM), and Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) for interval prediction. An IAO-based optimized VMD (IVMD) is employed to decompose non-stationary runoff series and enhance feature extraction, with the resulting components used as inputs to the CNN-SVM model for point prediction. To quantify predictive uncertainty, KDE is applied to model the prediction error distribution, where a B-spline-based least squares cross-validation bandwidth selection method (LSCV-B) is adopted. By combining B-spline basis functions with data-driven cross-validation, LSCV-B overcomes the limited local adaptability of conventional AMISE-based bandwidth selection, enabling more accurate error density estimation and narrower prediction intervals with reliable coverage. Experiments in the Yangtze River Basin show that the IVMD-CNN-SVM framework reduces RMSE and MAPE by approximately 40–50% on the testing dataset compared with VMD-based counterparts, while producing highly reliable and compact 90% interval predictions.