Modelling of total dissolved solids in water supply systems using regression and supervised machine learning approaches

Abstract Monitoring of water quality through accurate predictions provides adequate information about water management. In the present study, three different modelling approaches: Gaussian process regression (GPR), backpropagation neural network (BPNN) and principal component regression (PCR) models were used to predict the total dissolved solids (TDS) as water quality indicator for the water quality management. The performance of each model was evaluated based on three different sets of inputs from groundwater (GW), surface water (SW) and drinking water (DW). The GPR, BPNN and PCR models used in this study gave an accurate prediction of the observed data (TDS) in GW, SW and DW, with the R 2 consistently greater than 0.850. The GPR model gave a better prediction of TDS concentration, with an average R 2 , MAE and RMSE of 0.987, 4.090 and 7.910, respectively. For the BPNN, an average R 2 , MAE and RMSE of 0.913, 9.720 and 19.137, respectively, were achieved, while the PCR gave an average R 2 , MAE and RMSE of 0.888, 11.327 and 25.032, respectively. The performance of each model was assessed using efficiency based indicators such as the Nash and Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency ( E NS ) and the index of agreement (d). The GPR, BPNN and PCR models, respectively, gave an E NS of (0.967, 0.915, 0.874) and d of (0.992, 0.977, 0.965). It is understood from this study that advanced machine learning approaches (e.g. GPR and BPNN) are appropriate for the prediction of water quality indices and would be useful for future prediction and management of water quality parameters of various water supply systems in mining communities where artificial intelligence technology is yet to be fully explored.