Forecasting drought using modified empirical wavelet transform-ARIMA with fuzzy C-means clustering

Abstract

Drought forecasting is important in preparing for drought and its mitigation plan. This study focuses on the investigating the performance of Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and Empirical Wavelet Transform (EWT)-ARIMA based on clustering analysis in forecasting drought using Standard Precipitation Index (SPI). Daily rainfall data from Arau, Perlis from 1956 to 2008 was used in this study. SPI data of 3, 6, 9, 12 and 24 months were then calculated using the rainfall data. EWT is employed to decompose the time series into several finite modes. The EWT is used to create Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMF) which are used to create ARIMA models. Fuzzy c-means clustering is used on the instantaneous frequency given by Hilbert Transform of the IMF to create several clusters. The objective of this study is to compare the effectiveness of the methods in accurately forecasting drought in Arau, Malaysia. It was found that the proposed model performed better compared to ARIMA and EWT-ARIMA.