The accuracy of medium- and long-term runoff forecasting plays a significant role in several applications involving the management of hydrological resources, such as power generation, water supply and flood mitigation. Numerous studies that adopted combined forecasting models to enhance runoff forecasting accuracy have been proposed. Nevertheless, some models do not take into account the effects of different lag periods on the selection of input factors. Based on this, this paper proposed a novel medium- and long-term runoff combined forecasting model based on different lag periods. In this approach, the factors are initially selected by the time-delay correlation analysis method of different lag periods and further screened with stepwise regression analysis. Next, an extreme learning machine (ELM) is adopted to integrate each result obtained from the three single models, including multiple linear regression (MLR), feed-forward back propagation-neural network (FFBP-NN) and support vector regression (SVR), which is optimized by particle swarm optimization (PSO). To verify the effectiveness and versatility of the proposed combined model, the Lianghekou and Jinping hydrological stations from the Yalong River basin, China, are utilized as case studies. The experimental results indicate that compared with MLR, FFBP-NN, SVR and ridge regression (RR), the proposed combined model can better improve the accuracy of medium- and long-term runoff forecasting in the statistical indices of MAE, MAPE, RMSE, DC, U95 and reliability.

The water process refers to the movement and changes in water on Earth, encompassing changes among its three states and its spatial movement. This process is vital for human society as it directly influences water resources, environmental sustainability, and climate regulation. Previous studies have used various related factors to analyze the water process but have not explained the rationale behind selecting these factors from the perspective of pathways. Based on this, the paper explores the construction and application of a top-down water process knowledge graph to clarify the changing process of water movement and the sources of influencing factors. Firstly, we define the concept of the water process and classify its entities based on the concept of water boundaries. Secondly, we identify key knowledge components of the water process, including water bodies, processes, and influencing factors. Finally, we construct and analyze a knowledge graph of the water process and its influencing factors. Results show that (1) the paths of water process help us understand the movement and change process of the water bodies; (2) the number of paths increases with the length of the connection between entities, reflecting the complexity of water process relationships; and (3) tracing these pathways can help identify their influencing factors, providing a data foundation for applying deep learning algorithms in water process research.