홍수량 예측 인공신경망 모형의 활성화 함수에 따른 영향 분석

The objective of this study was to analyze the impact of activation functions on flood forecasting model based on Artificial neural networks (ANNs). The traditional activation functions, the sigmoid and tanh functions, were compared with the functions which have been recently recommended for deep neural networks; the ReLU, leaky ReLU, and ELU functions. The flood forecasting model based on ANNs was designed to predict real-time runoff for 1 to 6-h lead time using the rainfall and runoff data of the past nine hours. The statistical measures such as R2, Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), the error of peak time (ETp), and the error of peak discharge (EQp) were used to evaluate the model accuracy. The tanh and ELU functions were most accurate with R2=0.97 and RMSE=30.1 (m3/s) for 1-h lead time and R2=0.56 and RMSE=124.6∼124.8 (m3/s) for 6-h lead time. We also evaluated the learning speed by using the number of epochs that minimizes errors. The sigmoid function had the slowest learning speed due to the ‘vanishing gradient problem’ and the limited direction of weight update. The learning speed of the ELU function was 1.2 times faster than the tanh function. As a result, the ELU function most effectively improved the accuracy and speed of the ANNs model, so it was determined to be the best activation function for ANNs-based flood forecasting.