A Multi-imputation Method to Deal With Hydro-Meteorological Missing Values by Integrating Chain Equations and Random Forest

Xin Jing, Jungang Luo (), Jingmin Wang, Ganggang Zuo and Na Wei
Additional contact information
Xin Jing: Xi’an University of Technology
Jungang Luo: Xi’an University of Technology
Jingmin Wang: Project Construction Co.Ltd
Ganggang Zuo: Xi’an University of Technology
Na Wei: Xi’an University of Technology

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2022, vol. 36, issue 4, No 2, 1159-1173

Abstract: Abstract Imputing hydro-meteorological missing values is essential in time series modeling. Imputation of missing values was traditionally performed after an observation period, which cannot effectively support water resources management in time. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with the missing data online. Moreover, traditional imputation methods usually consider only one observation variable and generate one set of imputations, which cannot describe the imputation uncertainty. Thus, a multiple-imputation method is proposed in this paper by integrating chain equations and random forest, namely, MICE-RF, to deal with the hydro-meteorological missing values. MICE-RF first simulates multiple imputation series to obtain the optimal imputations using the evaluation results of multiple imputation series. The traditional linear imputation, mean imputation, spline imputation, and k nearest neighbor imputation are compared to illustrate the robustness, reliability, and accuracy of the MICE-RF. According to the results, the MICE-RF provides the best imputation accuracy and can be easily implemented online.

Keywords: Hydro-meteorological time series; Missing data processing; Multiple imputation by chain equations; Random Forest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11269-021-03037-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:36:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s11269-021-03037-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-021-03037-5

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().