SARIMA Short to Medium-Term Forecasting and Stochastic Simulation of Streamflow, Water Levels and Sediments Time Series from the HYDAT Database

Abstract

This study aims to investigate short-to-medium forecasting and simulation of streamflow, water levels, and sediments in Canada using Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) time series models. The methodology can account for linear trends in the time series that may result from climate and environmental changes. A Universal Canadian forecast Application using python web interface was developed to generate short-term forecasts using SARIMA. The Akaike information criteria was used as performance criteria for generating efficient SARIMA models. The developed models were validated by analyzing the residuals. Several stations from the Canadian Hydrometric Database (HYDAT) displaying a linear upward or downward trend were identified to validate the methodology. Trends were detected using the Man-Kendall test. The Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficients (Nash ad Sutcliffe, 1970) of the developed models indicate that they are acceptable. The models can be used for short term (1 to 7 days) and medium-term (7 days to six months) forecasting of streamflow, water levels and sediments at all Canadian hydrometric stations. Such a forecast can be used for water resources management and help mitigate the effects of floods and droughts. The models can also be used to generate long time-series that can be used to test the performance of water resources systems. Finally, we have automated the process of analysis, model-building and forecasting streamflow, water levels, and sediments by building a python-based application easily extendable and user-friendly. Therefore, automating the SARIMA calibration and forecasting process for all Canadian stations for the HYDAT database will prove to be a very useful tool for decision-makers and other entities in the field of hydrological study.