arXiv AI

Pure and physics-guided deep learning approaches for spatio-temporal groundwater level prediction

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)
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 2

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.

By Mohammad A. Farmani, Hoshin V. Gupta, Ali Behrangi, Muhammad Jawad, Sadaf Moghisi, Guo-Yue Niu
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 14

Parameter estimation for land-surface models using Neural Physics

arXiv:2505. 02979v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We propose a novel inverse-modelling approach that estimates the parameters of a simple land-surface model (LSM) by assimilating data into a differentiable, physics-based forward model formulated using convolutional operations.

By Ruiyue Huang, Claire E. Heaney, Maarten van Reeuwijk
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