AI based prediction of daily rainfall from satellite observation for disaster management

Abstract

We are all well aware of the fact that heavy rainfall is one of the major sources of causing disasters. Be it flood or drought, landslide or erosion rainfall is the prime factor to be causing these calamities. Timely prediction of rainfall is important to be ready for facing upcoming disasters. In this research work, an attempt has been made to predict daily rainfall from satellite observation for disaster management using Artificial Intelligence (AI). A multi-stacked LSTM based model has been used for prediction of daily rainfall. The model uses 40 years of dataset provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) / Goddard Space Flight Center through MERRA-2 portal. The dataset belongs to Yamuna Nagar district in Haryana, India during the period 1980 - 2020 for the training purpose. The outcome of the research proves that LSTM based neural networks are better alternative to forecast general weather conditions when compared with traditional methods. The outcome of the model can further be improved by including more parameters and better hyper parameter tuning. Copyright © 2020 SPIE.