arXiv Machine Learning

Process-Aware AI for Rainfall-Runoff Modeling: A Mass-Conserving Neural Framework with Hydrological Process Constraints

The paper introduces the Mass‑Conserving Perceptron (MCP), a physics‑aware AI framework that enforces conservation laws while learning hydrological process relationships from data. By progressively adding physically meaningful components—such as bounded soil storage, state‑dependent conductivity, variable porosity, infiltration capacity, surface ponding, vertical drainage, and nonlinear water‑table dynamics—to a single MCP storage unit, the authors demonstrate that predictive skill for daily streamflow improves across 15 U.S. catchments. The study finds that the impact of each process representation varies with hydroclimate, with vertical drainage boosting performance in arid and snow‑dominated basins but hindering it in rainfall‑dominated ones, while surface ponding has minimal effect; the best MCP configurations rival LSTM benchmarks while retaining explicit physical interpretability.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 30

From Conceptual Hydrologic Models to Conceptually Interpretable Neural Networks: A Snow-Water Mass-Conserving-Perceptron Framework for Discovering Catchment-Scale Precipitation-Storage-Runoff Representations

arXiv:2607. 26492v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The Mass-Conserving Perceptron (MCP) establishes a modeling paradigm in which conceptual hydrologic models can be reformulated as physically constrained, conceptually interpretable neural networks.

By Yuan-Heng Wang, Hoshin V. Gupta
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 16

Towards CONUS-Wide ML-Augmented Conceptually-Interpretable Modeling of Catchment-Scale Precipitation-Storage-Runoff Dynamics

arXiv:2510. 02605v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: While many modern studies are dedicated to ML-based large-sample hydrologic modeling, these efforts have not necessarily translated into predictive improvements that are grounded in enhanced physical-conceptual understanding.

By Yuan-Heng Wang, Yang Yang, Fabio Ciulla, Hoshin V. Gupta, Charuleka Varadharajan
arXiv AI
1d ago

From hydrological laws to catchment models: A process-based model matches deep-learning accuracy on three continents

The study investigates whether a physically grounded, low‑dimensional catchment model can rival the predictive accuracy of neural networks. By applying three fundamental hydrological laws—conservation, dissipation, and aggregation—to a lumped model, the authors develop CaRT and its refined version CaRT+, which uses 14 states and 35 parameters per catchment. Across 602 British, 593 US, and 505 Australian gauged catchments, CaRT+ achieves median Nash‑Sutcliffe efficiencies comparable to state‑of‑the‑art LSTM models, demonstrating that process‑based laws can match deep‑learning performance.

By Xilin Xia
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Predictors and Orchestrators: Parsimonious Machine Learning within an Agentic AI Harness for Multi-Horizon Karst Aquifer Forecasting

The study presents a deployment‑aware framework for forecasting spring discharge and groundwater levels in the Edwards Aquifer over 1‑12 week horizons using 79 years of hydroclimatic data. Five machine‑learning families—extreme gradient boosting, extremely randomized trees, LSTM, CNN, and Transformers—were compared, with extreme gradient boosting consistently delivering the highest reliability (R² ≥ 0.94) and strong agreement with operational drought thresholds. The validated models were integrated into a five‑agent operational architecture that automates data acquisition, model selection, prediction, threshold monitoring, verification, literature retrieval, and reporting.

By Pramod Lekhak, Chetan Sharma, Hakan Ba\c{s}a\u{g}ao\u{g}lu, F. Paul Bertetti, Debaditya Chakraborty
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 20

DELUGE: Towards Continental-Scale Daily Pluvial Flood Damage Prediction via Interpretable Conditioning on Foundation Model Embeddings

arXiv:2607. 16050v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Pluvial (rainfall-driven) flooding accounts for 45% of National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims in the United States and is harder to predict than its riverine and coastal counterparts, with existing approaches limited to coarse resolution, regional domains, or computationally intensive process-based models unsuitable for daily continental-scale use.

By Yuya Kawakami, Daniel Cayan, Dongyu Liu, Kwan-Liu Ma, Tom Corringham
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 28

HydroAgent: Formalizing Forecaster Expertise into Skill-Orchestrated Flood Forecasting Workflows

arXiv:2607. 23983v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Operational flood forecasting depends on tacit forecaster expertise that is difficult to formalize, audit, and transfer.

By Qingyi Yang, Siqian Qiu, Bing Li, Xu Shan, Jia Feng, Shunan Zhou, Xudong Zhou, Tiantian Xing, Jiale Guo, Xiaoyi Dong, Gaoyu Liu, Xiaohuan Liu, Haiqing Pu, Qingwen Deng, Xun Zhang, Zhongrun Xiang, Haiyang Qian, Ying Yan, Yongkang Xu, Nuo Lei, Tianlong Jia, Baoying Shan, Carlo De Michele
arXiv AI
Sep 18

Physical knowledge on historical data matters more than enforcing physical constraints on the forecast

The paper introduces a Physics Informed Recurrent Neural Network (PIRNN) that simultaneously predicts target time series and unobservable intermediate physical variables, enhancing robustness and interpretability. It adapts to any physical model with multiple equations and variables, demonstrated on groundwater level predictions using the Gardenia model. Experiments on twelve real‑world datasets show PIRNN outperforming several neural network baselines and the Gardenia model, with an ablation study confirming the value of physical knowledge.

By Etienne Lehembre (CA, LIFO), Pascal Audigane (BRGM), Vincent Nguyen (LIFO), Christel Vrain (LIFO, CA), Thi-Bich-Hanh Dao (LIFO, CA)