Simulating the Impacts of Climate Change on the Hydrology of Doğancı Dam in Bursa, Turkey, Using Feed-Forward Neural Networks

Climate change continues to pose significant challenges to global water security, with dams being particularly vulnerable to hydrological cycle alterations. This study investigated the climate-based impact on the hydrology of the Doğancı dam, located in Bursa, Turkey, using feed-forward neural networks (FNNs). The modeling used meteorological parameters as inputs. The employed FNN comprised one input, hidden, and output layer. The efficacy of the models was evaluated by comparing the correlation coefficients (R), mean squared errors (MSE), and mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE). Furthermore, two training algorithms, namely Levenberg-Marquardt and resilient backpropagation, were employed to determine the algorithm that yields more accurate output predictions. The findings of the study showed that the model using air temperature, solar radiation, solar intensity, evaporation, and evapotranspiration as predictors for the water budget and water level of the Doğancı dam exhibited the lowest MSE (0.59) and MAPE (1.31%) and the highest R (0.99) compared to other models under LM training. The statistical analysis determined no significant difference ( p > 0.05) between the Levenberg and Marquardt and resilient backpropagation training algorithms. However, a visual interpretation revealed that the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm outperformed the resilient backpropagation, yielding lower errors, higher correlation values, and faster convergence for the models tested in this study. The novelty of this study lies in the use of certain meteorological inputs, particularly snow depth, for dam inflow forecasting, which has seldom been explored. Moreover, this study compared two widely used ANN training algorithms and applied the modeling framework to a region of strategic importance for Turkey’s water security. This study highlights the effectiveness of ANN-based modeling for hydrological forecasting and determining climate-induced impacts on water bodies such as dams and reservoirs.