Regionalization in a global hydrologic deep learning model: from
physical descriptors to random vectors
Abstract
Streamflow prediction is a long-standing hydrologic problem. Development
of models for streamflow prediction often requires incorporation of
catchment physical descriptors to characterize the associated complex
hydrological processes. Across different scales of catchments, these
physical descriptors also allow models to extrapolate hydrologic
information from one catchment to others, a process referred to as
“regionalization”. Recently, in gauged basin scenarios, deep learning
models have been shown to achieve state of the art regionalization
performance by building a global hydrologic model. These models predict
streamflow given catchment physical descriptors and weather forcing
data. However, these physical descriptors are by their nature uncertain,
sometimes incomplete, or even unavailable in certain cases, which limits
the applicability of this approach. In this paper, we show that by
assigning a vector of random values as a surrogate for catchment
physical descriptors, we can achieve robust regionalization performance
under a gauged prediction scenario. Our results show that the deep
learning model using our proposed random vector approach achieves a
predictive performance comparable to that of the model using actual
physical descriptors. The random vector approach yields robust
performance under different data sparsity scenarios and deep learning
model selections. Furthermore, based on the use of random vectors,
high-dimensional characterization improves regionalization performance
in gauged basin scenario when physical descriptors are uncertain, or
insufficient.