Comparative Study of SVMs and ANNs in Aquifer Water Level Prediction

In this research, a data-driven modeling approach, support vector machines (SVMs), is compared to artificial neural networks (ANNs) for predicting transient groundwater levels in a complex groundwater system under variable pumping and weather conditions. Various prediction horizons were used, including daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, and bimonthly prediction horizons. It was found that even though modeling performance (in terms of prediction accuracy and generalization) for both approaches was generally comparable, SVM outperformed ANN particularly for longer prediction horizons when fewer data events were available for model development. In other words, SVM has the potential to be a useful and practical tool for cases where less measured data are available for future prediction. The study also showed high consistency between the training and testing phases of modeling when using SVM compared to ANN. While for the proposed SVM model the relative error of mean square error increased by an average of 42% from the training phase to testing the phase, the corresponding testing error of the ANN model raised by approximately seven times the training error.