Near-term forecasting of water reservoir storage capacities using long short-term memory

Abstract Predicting reservoir storage capacities is an important planning activity for effective conservation and water release practices. Weather events such as drought and precipitation impact water storage capacities in reservoirs. Predictive insights on reservoir storage levels are beneficial for water planners and stakeholders in effective water resource management. A deep learning (DL) neural network (NN) based reservoir storage prediction approach is proposed that learns from climate, hydrological, and storage information within the reservoir’s associated watershed. These DL models are trained and evaluated for 17 reservoirs in Texas, USA. Using the trained models, reservoir storage predictions were validated with a test data set spanning 2 years. The reported results show promise for longer-term water planning decisions.