Journal of Arid Environments 189 (2021) 104478

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Journal of Arid Environments

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaridenv

Review

A machine learning model for drought tracking and forecasting using

remote precipitation data and a standardized precipitation index from
arid regions
Moncef Bouaziz a, b, *, Emna Medhioub a, b, Elmar Csaplovisc b
a
National School of Engineering of Sfax, University of Sfax, Tunisia
b
Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, TU-Dresden, Helmholtzstr. 10, 01069, Germany

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Drought is a catastrophe that impacts agriculture and causes economic and social damage. An effective moni­
Drought toring and forecasting system is needed to assess the extent of droughts and to mitigate their effects at both
Standardized precipitation index spatial and temporal levels. To this end, we used a Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) in various timescales to
CHIRPS
classify and track drought events based on CHIRPS rainfall data for the period between 1981 and 2019. Three
Drought forecast
models (M1, M2, M3) were then tested for annual drought prediction (SPI_12) using precipitation data and the
Extreme learning machine
lagged SPI as input variables. Extreme Learning Machine algorithms displayed rapid drought prediction, with
high accuracy on different timescales (0.7–0.8 R2).

1. Introduction droughts, at multiple time steps.

Drought is considered one of the most costly natural disasters on
earth (Hao et al., 2014). Worldwide, 22% of economic damage is asso­
ciated with natural disasters (Wilhite et al., 2007). The monitoring and
forecasting of droughts plays a key role in the assessment of ecosystem
health and mitigating the impact of extreme weather events on human
society. Meteorological drought is a result of a significant decline in
precipitation. This reduces water availability on land in the form of
snowpack, ice sheets, lakes, and rivers. Due to the complexity of the
drought phenomena and the requirements for its assessment, several
indices have been developed and used in assessing drought events (e.g.
Eden (2012); van Hoek (2016)) among others. Most of these studies used
meteorological parameters as indicators for droughts, like the Stan­
dardized Precipitation Index (SPI) (Winkler et al., 2017), Drought
Severity Index (DSI) (Odewale and Adebola, 2019), and the Standard­
ized Precipitation and Evaporation Index (SPEI) (Sergio et al., 2010).
The SPI is the most used index for drought monitoring (Mckee et al.,
1993; Hayes et al., 2011; Zhen et al., 2018). It is the amount of standard
deviations by which the value of a given precipitation event is more or
less than the historical mean. This was developed to detect and track
drought events using monthly rainfall data. It is used on the investiga­
tion areas to determine drought periods as well as the intensity of
An efficient and suitable tracking system is required to assist in the
set-up of a drought early warning system (Nguyen et al., 2015). How­
ever, drought time series are typically characterized by both nonline­
arity and instability. Therefore, linear time-series prediction techniques
are not enough to detect the properties of hydrological time-series (Wei
et al., 2012). Many Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have been
acknowledged as effective tools for modeling complex hydrological
systems widely used for prediction, such as Artificial Neural Networks
(ANNs). The ML algorithm frequently applied in climate science is the
Artificial Neural Network. ANN is a robust, adaptable data-driven al­
gorithm to capture and represent complex input-output interaction
(Abbot and Marohasy 2012, 2014; Şahin et al., 2013; Govindaraju
2000). This model has been tested for precipitation and temperature
forecasts in many parts of the world including Australia (Abbot and
Marohasy 2012, 2014; Masinde 2013; Nastos et al., 2014). However, the
main challenge faced by ANN is the requirement for iterative tuning of
model parameters, the slow response of the gradient-based learning al­
gorithm used, and the moderately low prediction precision compared to
the more advanced ML algorithm (e.g.,Acharya et al., 2013; Şahin et al.,
2014).
Extreme Learning Machines (ELM) are among the noteworthy
emergent ML techniques. They have been also used for forecasting soil

* Corresponding author. National School of Engineering of Sfax, University of Sfax, Tunisia.

E-mail address: moncef.bouaziz@gmail.com (M. Bouaziz).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2021.104478
Received 8 December 2020; Received in revised form 17 February 2021; Accepted 18 February 2021
Available online 16 March 2021
0140-1963/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
M. Bouaziz et al.
Fig. 1. Location of the study area (a) Composed MODIS image of Africa from 2005 (b) Composed MODIS Terra Data of 2010.
temperature (Nahvia et al., 2016), floods (Chen et al., 2018), or solar
radiation (Ghimire et al., 2018). Some of these ELM models were able to
predict droughts with high accuracy in a timescale for up to 12 months
(Zhen et al.,2018). Therefore, we opted for ELM as a statistical model to
explain the issue of SPI prediction (Byun and Wilhite, 1999).
In order to investigate meteorological droughts during the last forty
years, a Mediterranean semi-arid study area in eastern Tunisia was
selected. Remote sensing data was used to detect temporal features of
meteorological drought through the SPI and run with ELM algorithms to
forecast meteorological drought.
2. Study region
The study area is located in eastern Tunisia, which is a south Medi­
terranean arid region (Fig. 1). This area was chosen because it is
Fig. 2. (a) shows the number and location of all meteorological stations included in CHIRPS data of Aug. 2019; (b) shows number of stations included in monthly
CHIRPS data over the years of 1981–2019.
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Journal of Arid Environments 189 (2021) 104478
agricultural and therefore acute socio-economic and environmental
problems can be triggered by droughts. The arid Sfax plain is charac­
terized by fragile soils and under-developed plant cover. Long periods of
drought are usually followed by thunderstorms and flash floods, which
will be accentuated in intensity and frequency by the effect of climate
change. Temperatures can reach 48 ◦ C in the summer months. The
annual mean precipitation varies between 150 and 240 mm per year.
3. Materials and methods
3.1. Data
For a statistical approach to drought prediction, solid data is essen­
tial. An effective index, such as the SPI, requires long-term records over
at least 30 years and does not allow for data gaps (Jain et al., 2015). Due
M. Bouaziz et al. Journal of Arid Environments 189 (2021) 104478

Table 1
Classification of drought, based on the distribution of the
SPI index (Zhen et al., 2018).
SPI value Drought category

(2.0, þ∞) Extreme wet

(1.5, 2.0] Severe wet
(1.0, 1.5] Moderate wet
(–1.0, 1.0] Normal
(–1.5, –1.0] Moderate drought
(–2.0, –1.5] Severe drought
(–∞, –2.0] Extreme drought

to the long-term availability (1981 to present) and accuracy of the

Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data
(CHIRPS) dataset, make it preferable to other data sets such as in-situ
data from Tunisian meteorological stations. In the study area there are
only 4 meteorological stations and data collection has not been
continuous (Fig. 2a).
CHIRPS data is a quasi-global (50◦ S-50◦ N), high resolution (0.05◦ ),
daily, and monthly precipitation dataset, first introduced in 2014 and
frequently updated [26]. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) developed this dataset
and gathered clear evidence from our research area dating back to1981.
Amonthly time series of precipitation datasets from 1981 to 2019 were
compiled from CHIRPSv2.0 in Sfax.
The CHIRPSv2.0 dataset is open access and available in various
formats (Funk et al., 2015).
3.2. Methods
3.2.1. Calculation of the SPI
The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)was used for measuring
droughts in the region of Sfax over the past 38 years, based on the
CHIRPS dataset. The SPI is obtained by calculating a uniform likelihood
Fig. 3. ELM network topological structure (Huang et al., 2016).
3.2.2. ELM method
The algorithm of the ELM is a three-step method (Huang et al.,
2016). This modern machine-learning algorithm based on a Single Layer
Feedforward Neural Network (SLFNs) and optimized for better perfor­
mance convergence is a fast method (Huang et al., 2016; Deo and Şahin,
2015).
Fig. 3 presents the general structure of an ELM network. The stan­
dard SLFNs algorithm produces randomly connection weight between N
arbitrary input samples and the M hidden nodes. To activate this func­
tion the number of hidden neurons must be specified, so the only
optimal solution is the one obtained (Zhen et al., 2018; Li et al., 2016;
Zhang et al., 2013). The ELM model’s mathematical function can be
expressed by the formula (Zhen et al., 2018; Huang et al., 2011):
∑
M
βi g(xn , ; bi , wi ) = yn ; n = 1, 2, 3, …, N (4)
i=1

for precipitation deficit (Patel et al., 2007; McRoberts et al., 2012). The
where “bi” ∈ℝis the hidden ith node’s randomly assigned bias
SPI is recommended by the World Meteorological Organization (Hayes
and”wi”∈ℝ is the randomly assigned weight of the input vector linking
et al., 2011). It has been effectively used in several drought forecasting
the ith hidden neuron and the input data. βi is the relation of the hidden
scenarios where ML algorithms have successfully been applied (Zhen
ith node to the output neuron by the weight vector, “g (xn;bi,wi)” is the
et al., 2018). To obtain the accumulated probability, the precipitation
output result of the xninput sample related to the ith hidden node. Each
data series is fitted to a gamma probability density function and then
input is distributed to the hidden nodes in the ELM network randomly.
converted to a regular distribution with an inverse normal function
Then, it is possible to write Eq. (4) as:
(Mondol et al., 2017; Chen et al., 2020). The SPI values can then be set as
follows: Hβ = Y (5)
( ) √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
SPI = − t −
c0 + c1 t + c2 t2
; t = ln
1
; 0 < H(x) ≤ 0.5 (1) where
1 + d1 t + d2 t2 + d3 t3 (H(x))2 [ ]
g(x1 , ; b1 , w1 )) … g(x1 , ; bM , wM )
H= (6)
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅ g(xN , ; b1 , w1 ) … g(xN , ; bM , wM ) N×M
c0 + c1 t + c2 t2 1
SPI = t − ; t= ln ; 0.5 < H(x) < 1 (2) ( )T
1 + d1 t + d2 t2 + d3 t3 (1 − H(x))2 Hβ = βT1 , βT2 , …, βTL m×M (7)

where “x” is the monthly rainfall, c0 = 2.515517, c1 = 0.802853, c2 = and the output (Y)
0.010328, d1 = 1.432788, d2 = 0.189269, d3 = 0.001308, and “H(x)” is ( )T
the average likelihood of the data series being translated into an Y = t1T , t2T , …, tLT m×M (8)
incomplete gamma distribution function (Santos et al., 2017). The dis­
According to Zhen et al. (2018) “H” shows the hidden layer’s output
tribution of the gamma function is expressed as follows:
matrix and “T” is the label matrix.
g(x) =
1
xα− 1 e− xβ− 1
;x > 0 (3) β is the output weights, which are obtained by finding the least
βα Γ(α) square solutions to the linear system described above (Deo and sahin,
2015):
where “α” and “β” represent the shape and the scale parameters
respectively, and Γ(α) is the main function in the gamma distribution. β = H+ Y (9)
SPI values were determined using eight-timescales (1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, Deo and Şahin (2015) defines“H+“as H’s matrix generalized inverse
18, and 24 months). The description of the intensity of dryness and of Moore-Penrose.
wetness according to SPI values is shown in Table 1(Mckee et al., 1993;
McKee, 1995; Zhen et al., 2018; Chen et al., 2020). 3.2.3. Structures and development of the models
Prediction results are strongly influenced by the model

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M. Bouaziz et al. Journal of Arid Environments 189 (2021) 104478

Table 2 SPI_12 with different input structures (Table 2).

Model structures forSPI 12 forecasting. The output layer of the ELM is the predicted SPI_12 (SPI_12p) and it
Model Input structure is represented in one neuron. The hidden nodes’ number selected for
each model can be altered for higher precision (varies between 1 and
M1 SPI_1, SPI_3, SPI_6 and SPI_9
M2 SPI_6 and SPI_9 200), and the chosen number is selected by trial and error. In each trial,
M3 Prcp_CHIRPS and SPI_9 the number of nodes increases progressively until the optimum hidden
nodes are reached. There are several activation modes, including sig­
moid, sine, radial base, hardlimit, etc., which were evaluated in turn.
Table 3 The optimal node for ELM was then chosen for each model with the most
Optimal hidden neurons and activation function of the three models. accurate activation function (Table 3).
The useable data spread over 38 years (1981–2019) was split into
Models Hidden neurons Activation function Model architecture
two phases: training (1981–2011) and testing (2012–2019) phases. The
M1 18 Rectifier linear unit (‘relu’) 4-18-1 older data was used to train the design of ELM network algorithms. After
M2 18 Satlins (‘satlins’) 2-18-1
M3 3 Satlins (‘satlins’) 2-3-1
the training process, a weight matrix was obtained from the proposed
network and applied to the independent inputs of the “test” dataset. The
predicted values were then compared with the observed results of the
configuration. Therefore, the collection of input variables is one of the SPI_12 (SPI_12◦ ).
most critical steps in the ML technique. Bacanli et al. (2009) used lagged The efficiency of ELM algorithm models was statistically evaluated
SPI and precipitation data measurements as input variables to forecast using the following scoring measures or predictive error indicators:
the SPI, and good prediction results were obtained. According to the Root-Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Co­
study conducted by Bacanli et al. (2009), different timescales and efficient of Determination (R2) (Paulescu et al., 2011; Ulgen and Hep­
CHIRPS precipitation data (Prcp_CHIRPS) are used in this research to basli 2002).
predict a 12-month SPI or SPI_12. Three models are chosen to predict All ELM simulation models have been built in the R studio

Fig. 4. Spatially averaged annual anomalies of precipitations in Sfax (1981–2019) derived from CHIRPS data (wet period in blue and drought period in red). (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

Fig. 5. Averaged monthly anomalies of precipitations in Sfax (1981–2019) derived from CHIRPS data (wet period in blue and drought period in red). (For inter­
pretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

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M. Bouaziz et al. Journal of Arid Environments 189 (2021) 104478

Fig. 6. SPI averaged in Sfax from 1981 until 2019 at different timescales: 1month (a); 3months (b); 6months (c); 9months (d); 12months (e); 15months (f), 18months
(g) and 24 months (h) derived from CHIRPS product; (wet periods in blue and dryperiods in red). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend,
the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

environment running on an Intel ® core i7, 2.2-GHz, 8 GB RAM exceptional years were 1981, which was the driest year (90 mm of
computer. rainfall), and 1990, which was the wettest year (>170 mm of rainfall).
Fig. 5 shows how monthly differences in rainfall vary between -23
4. Results and 60 mm with two exceptions in January 1990 (>150 mm) and
January 2009 (90 mm). Average rainfall deficits (drought risk) occurred
4.1. Drought monitoring using CHIRPS data in about half of the years analysed.

Figs. 4 and 5 show computed results of rainfall anomalies (differ­

ences between monthly precipitation records and the long-term average
(De Jesús et al., 2016) on annual and monthly timescales, respectively.
These demonstrate a clear delineation between dry and wet phases on
monthly and yearly timescales.
Annual rainfall varies between -70 and 90 mm/yr (Fig. 4). Two
4.2. Temporal evolution of SPI on different timescales
The average SPI temporal variability of the CHIRPS data at different
timescales in Sfax is illustrated in Fig. 6. Grey lines designate the stan­
dardized values of CHIRPS data in Sfax and the filled areas (blue and
red) correspond to the average monthly SPI. The amplitude of

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M. Bouaziz et al. Journal of Arid Environments 189 (2021) 104478

(SLFNs) in the second model (M2) yielded forecasting metrics as follows:

MAE (0.304), RMSE (0.443) and R2 (0.714). The two other models show
a good performance with a coefficient of determination of 0.705 and
0.680 respectively in M1 and M3 (Table 4).
The standard deviation of observed values divided by the Root Mean
Square Error or Forecast or Prediction (RMSEP) (Williams and Sobering
1993) is known as the Residual Prediction Deviation (RPD). The RDP
takes into consideration both the prediction error and the variance in
observable values, offering a model validity measure that is more
objective than the RMSE and easier to correlate through model valida­
tion studies (Chang et al., 2001). The higher the RPD the better is the

Fig. 7. Number of drought events detected by the CHIRPS data (moderate

drought in blue, severe drought in yellow and extreme drought in red) in Sfax
from 1981 to 2019. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure
legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

fluctuations decreases as the time scale increases, which shows that the
precision of SPI values is affected by the time series length. Shorter SPI
timescales are not efficient at characterizing drought events but can
detect the cyclicity of precipitation intensity (Tan et al., 2017). The
average timescales of SPI-1 (Fig. 6a) demonstrate the seasonal precipi­
tation variation. A similar seasonal pattern is observed, displayed with
smoother contours, in the average time series for SPI-3 (Fig. 6b) and
SPI-6 (Fig. 6c). Although SPI values for short timescales accurately
describe the cyclical behavior of the precipitation regime, they fail to
clearly indicate drought occurrences. Larger timescales of SPI outcomes
(e.g., SPI-12) are more valuable in the extrication of the persistent dry Fig. 8. Scatter plot of the predicted (SPI_12p) and observed (SPI_12◦ ) data
and wet periods (De Jesús et al., 2016), showing that the CHIRPS data based on ELM for the testing period 2012–2019 for model 1 (M1).
can be used for shorter drought analysis in Sfax. The timescale in cu­
mulative durations of 12, 15, 18 and 24 months (Fig. 6e, f, g, and h)
shows that the differences between dry and wet events become more
apparent and can reveal the impacts of long periods of drought on
agriculture.
Considering longer time periods (12, 15, 18, and 24 months), four
important drought events occurred in 1987–1989, 1993–1995,
2001–2004, and 2015–2016. These periods were separated by periods of
moderate drought, normal and/or wet periods (Fig. 6e, f, g, and h).
These drought events were confirmed by eyewitness accounts from the
studyarea.
It is important to stress that these SPI values represent average
conditions in Sfax, so more severe wet or dry conditions at the local or
regional scales might have occurred.
Fig. 7 show showmore severe drought events were revealedat longer
timescales of SPI, with an increase in drought events recorded after SPI-
6, except in SPI-24. The extreme drought events increase with a larger
timescale (Fig. 7) when the number of moderate drought events is
similar in all timescales, except for the SPI-18 whereby55 moderate
events were recorded and only 26 moderate events for SPI-24.
Table 4 displays the ability of the ELM models used in this study. The
optimum ELM model found by the “satlins” activation function with the Fig. 9. Scatter plot of the predicted (SPI_12p) and observed (SPI_12◦ ) data
learning rule of ELM for “Single Layer Feedforward Neural Network” based on ELM for the testing period 2012–2019 for model 2 (M2).

Table 4
The average results of all the models during training and testing.
Models SPI_12 Training Testing

R2 RMSE MAE RPD R2 RMSE MAE RPD

M1 0.737 0.512 0.350 1.945 0.705 0.446 0.333 1.819

M2 0.740 0.510 0.349 1.960 0.714 0.443 0.304 1.833
M3 0.726 0.522 0.356 1.913 0.680 0.463 0.342 1.752

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M. Bouaziz et al. Journal of Arid Environments 189 (2021) 104478

Fig. 12. Boxplot of Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI_12) from observed

data and predictions in each of the models (M1, M2 and M3) using Extreme
Learning Machine (ELM) for the 2012–2019 testing period.

correlation of the observed and the predicted values of the drought index
(Figs. 8–10). A clear degree of scattering is observed for the M3 model
Fig. 10. Scatter plot of the predicted (SPI_12p) and observed (SPI_12◦ ) data
based on ELM for the testing period 2012–2019 for model 3 (M3). between the SPI_12p and SPI_12◦ . Reduced scattering was apparent for
M2 and M1 (i.e.: Models without CHIRPS precipitation data in the input
variables), as also indicated by the stronger correlation of the linear
Table 5 regression model in each subplot.
Model performances based on linear regression (SPI_12p = m SPI_12◦ + c) of the A performance assessment based on the linear regression equation:
observed SPI_12 (SPI_12◦ ) with predicted SPI_12 (SPI_12p) from 2012 to 2019
for each model. SPI_12p = m SPI_12◦ + c (10)
Model m R2 r c is listed in Table 5, jointly with the best-fit slopes (m), the square of the
M1 0.,7895 0.7047 0.840 0.0005 correlation coefficient (R2), and the intercepts(c). The ELM model 2
M2 0.8156 0.7139 0.845 0.0117 (M2) achieved a better level of prediction for the SPI_12 than M1 and
M3 0.7489 0.6799 0.825 0.0312 M3, as demonstrated by values of m closer to 1 and relatively higher R2
(Table 5). The slopes and correlation for the ELM model displayed the
best performance for M2 and M1 (0.82, 0.79 and 0.714, 0.705, respec­
tively) and slightly less for M3 (0.75, 0.680).
The functional relationship between the observed and the different
predicted SPI_12 models using learning machine algorithms is shown in
Fig. 11 for the period from January 2012 to October 2019. Different
predicted models have a similar shape to the observed output in the
testing period. A lower degree of scattering in SPI_12 for the three
models was revealed comparing to the observed values of the index. The
difference between the observed and predicted data sets for the three
models became larger during extremely wet or dry periods, in addition
to a time offset for the predictions (Fig. 11).
The spread of the three predicted models and the observed SPI_12
have been shown in Fig. 12 using a Boxplot. The box shape lies between
the lower quartile Q1 (25th percentile) and upper quartile Q3 (75th
percentile). Two vertical lines (known as whiskers) are extended from
the box outside the upper and the lower quartile. The bottom whisker
extends fromQ1 to the smallest non-outlier in the dataset, whereas the
top whisker extends from Q3 to the largest non-outlier. It is clear that the
Fig. 11. Time-series of the 12 Months-Standardized Precipitation Index
(SPI_12) from observed (SPI_12◦ ) and predicted (SPI_12p) data using Machine
medians of predicted and observed SPI_12 for the three models were
Learning models (M1, M2 and M3) for the 2012–2019testing period. very similar (near to zero), negative for M1 and M2, and positive for M3
(due to the influence of precipitation data in the input variables of the
model). Additionally, the lower quartile of the second model (M2) and
predictive ability of the formula, which is the case of the proposed
the third model (M3)showed the weakest and best match with the
predictive models (M1, M2, M3).
observed data, respectively. However, the upper quartile of all models
In comparison with the average composition of all the samples, the
appeared to be over-estimated, but they were significantly shorter in M3
residual prediction deviation (RPD) is the component that shows the
and M1 than M2. In all cases, the spread of predicted SPI_12 was less
exact behavior of the prediction. In general, different authors tend to
than the observed SPI_12, but this does not affect the performance of the
work with RPDs obtained in validation, where RPDs <1.4 are considered
ELM model in terms ofthe prediction. The spread of whiskers in the
to be moderately or not at all representative, RPD values between 1.4
second model (M2) was the closest to the observed SPI_12, indicating
and 2.0 are considered appropriate predictions, and RPDs >2.0 are
that this model performed the best.
considered excellent for prediction (Chang et al., 2001), from which it is
stressed that the resulting SPI-12 prediction models show an adequate
5. Discussion
level of predictability.
For the used models (M1, M2, and M3) a scatter plot of SPI_12p
The results from this study establish the utility of using SPI to eval­
versus SPI_12◦ was conducted and displayed to assess the statistical
uate and track drought events. SPI values correctly define the cyclical

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M. Bouaziz et al.
behavior of the precipitation regime for short timescales, but they fail to
explicitly identify drought events. In order to resolve persistent dry and
wet cycles, broader timescales of SPI(e.g., SPI-12) are more valuable (De
Jesús et al., 2016). This means the CHIRPS data can be used in Sfax for
analysing shorter droughts (Fig. 7). The cumulative train timescales of
12, 15, 18 and 24 months indicate that the variations between prolonged
dry and wet periods are increasingly evident and may expose the effects
of lengthy droughts on agriculture.
Prediction errors obtained from models in the testing dataset are
slightly higher than errors from the training dataset, which indicates the
ELM method that was applied performed well (Table 4).
The findings suggest that CHIRPS data can be useful for dis­
tinguishing drought regularityover1-month, 3-month, and 6-month SPI
timescales. Monitoring of seasonal precipitation is important to build a
picture of short and medium-term moisture cycles when larger time­
scales are most likely tied to stream flows, reservoir levels, and even
groundwater levels.
The forecasting results of the three models used in this study are
promising (R2 = 0,82. Additionally, the use of the selected SPI-12 as an
input variable has accomplished improved performance.
In addition to the time offset for the forecasts, the gap between the
actual and expected data sets for the three models became more
important for increasingly extreme values (extremely wet or dry
periods).
6. Conclusions
In the proposed study, precipitation data from satellite CHIRPS were
used as input for SPI to monitor drought from 1981 to 2019 over
different time scales (1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, and 24 months). Forecasting
of meteorological droughts was based on using SPI as input forELM
algorithms.
The computed SPI values exhibit a high degree of reliability between
wet and dry periods over the different time scales, and the amplitude of
fluctuations decreases with increasing time scale. As the time scale in­
creases, the reliability of the calculated SPI values increases slightly and
reveals the drought periods that occurred in eastern Tunisia from 2001
to 2004 and from 2015 to 2016.
This study confirms the utility of using SPIwith the ELM to forecast
meteorological drought and detect temporal patterns of drought with a
high coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.71) and a good residual pre­
dictive deviation value. This can be helpful for local communities to
adapt their land use accordingly and to plan new strategies for dealing
with expected future droughts.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships this paper that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors are very grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt foun­
dation for their support to conduct the proposed research work.
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