Reservoir Sedimentation Estimation Using Artificial Neural Network

Conventional methods and models available for estimation of reservoir sedimentation process differ greatly in terms of complexity, inputs, and other requirements. An artificial neural network (ANN) model was used to estimate the volume of sediment retained in a reservoir. Annual rainfall, annual inflow, and capacity of the reservoir were chosen as inputs. Thirty Two years of data pertaining to Gobindsagar Reservoir on the Satluj River in India, were used in this study (23 years for training and 9 years for testing). The pattern of the sediment volume retained in this reservoir was well captured by the Multi-Layer Perceptron (3-5-1) ANN model using the back propagation algorithm. Based on several performance indices, it was found that the ANN model estimated the volume of sediment retained in the reservoir with better accuracy and less effort as compared to conventional regression analysis.