bakaano-hydro 1.1.8

Distributed hydrology-guided neural network for streamflow prediction

Bakaano-Hydro

Description

Bakaano-Hydro is a distributed hydrology-guided neural network model for streamflow prediction. Bakaano-Hydro employs a serial hybridization approach and integrates a gridded process-based rainfall-runoff method that captures spatial heterogeneity and dynamic interactions of meteorological forcings and physiographic attributes generating spatially distributed runoff estimates; a flow routing method propagating runoff through the river network based on topographic constraints to preserve hydrological connectivity.; and a sequential neural network that uses routed flow sequences extracted at hydrological stations to predict streamflow. This approach ensures that primary hydrological responses to climate, soil, topography, and vegetation interactions and changes are captured by process-based components, enhancing interpretability while leveraging deep learning for pattern recognition.

Bakaano-Hydro leverages extensive data inputs—ranging from digital elevation models (DEMs) to meteorological time-series—and processes them through a robust sequence of automated steps. This includes the download, preprocessing, and alignment of source data, as well as regridding inputs to the desired spatial resolution, ensuring consistency and accuracy across all datasets. It is highly adaptable, providing users with two primary options for data input: they can either let the model automatically download and preprocess all relevant input data or supply their own datasets. If users choose the latter, Bakaano-Hydro accommodates them by accepting data in the widely-used WGS84 geographic coordinate system (EPSG:4326), without the need for time-consuming clipping or regridding. The model seamlessly adjusts input data to match the DEM's spatial resolution, ensuring that all variables are consistently aligned for optimal performance.

Installation

Bakaano-Hydro is built on TensorFlow and is designed to leverage GPU acceleration for training. This requires a system with an NVIDIA GPU installed or bundled CUDA and cuDNN runtime libraries. GPU acceleration is strongly recommended for training deep learning components and running large-scale simulations, as it significantly improves speed and scalability.

If you have a compatible NVIDIA GPU and drivers installed, install with:

pip install bakaano-hydro[gpu]

This will automatically install the correct version of TensorFlow along with CUDA and cuDNN runtime libraries

If you do not have access to a GPU, you can still install and use Bakaano-Hydro in CPU mode (e.g., for inference, testing or small-scale evaluation):

pip install bakaano-hydro

Note: Training on CPU is supported but will be significantly slower, especially on large datasets or deep learning tasks.

Usage

Bakaano-Hydro requires three primary data or inputs

1. Shapefile of study area or river basin
2. Observed streamflow data in NetCDF format from Global Runoff Data Center (https://portal.grdc.bafg.de/applications/public.html?publicuser=PublicUser#dataDownload/Home). Because Bakaano-Hydro aims to use only open-source data, it currently accepts observed streamflow data only from GRDC.
3. Registration at Google Earth Engine (https://code.earthengine.google.com/register). Bakaano-Hydro retrieves, NDVI, tree cover and meteorological variables from ERA5-land or CHIRPS from Google Earth Engine Data Catalog. This platform requires prior registration for subsequent authentication during execution of the model

Model execution then involves only five steps. See the quick start notebook https://github.com/confidence-duku/bakaano-hydro/blob/main/quick_start.ipynb for guidance.

Code architecture

Support

For assistance, please contact Confidence Duku ([e-mail])

Contributing

No contributions are currently accepted.

Authors and acknowledgment

See CITATION.cff file.

License

Apache License