2009 International Conference on Energy and Environment Technology

GCA-CG Based Groundwater Level Prediction

With Uncertainty in Lower Reaches of Tarim River
Yue Chen
Digital Engineering and Simulation Centre
Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Wuhan 430074, P.R.China
Email: chenyue 917@126.com

Yuhong Li (Corresponding Author)

Digital Engineering and Simulation Centre
Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Wuhan 430074, P.R.China
Email: liyuhong@hust.edu.cn

is one of the areas with the most serious desertification.

Due to the irrational exploitation during the past 50 years
in this watershed, with increasingly reduction of the stream
flow to the lower reaches of Tarim River, more and more
serious eco-environmental problems have occurred, such as
the stream flow cut-off since the 1970s, river downstream
dry, groundwater level declining, expansion of desertification
and salinization and grassland degradation, and so on. With
a full length of 428km, the lower reaches of Tarim River
are located in the eastern part of Tarim Basin in Xinjiang.
Surrounded by Taklimakan desert and Kuluk desert, as one
of the most drought regions in the western part of China,
the lower reaches of Tarim River have encountered serious ecological and environmental problems. The ecological
problems of the whole stream area should be taken into
accounts when making plans for water resources utilization,
so as to maintain sustainable and coordinated development
of environment and economy in the research area.
Concern about the quality and quantity of ground water
resources has motivated the development of increasingly
sophisticated models to describe water flow and solute transport in unsaturated soils. However, most of these models are
generally based on numerical solutions of the Richards equation which rely on expressions for soil water retention and
unsaturated hydraulic conductivity. According to observed
sample analysis of groundwater level and salinity variation
in lower reaches of Tarim River, Zhang (2003) made a grey
correlation analysis on chemical elements of groundwater
and groundwater level before and after surface ecological
water transportation [1]. Based on his research, this paper
proposed a prediction method of groundwater level with
uncertainty, which is called GCA-CG model. Firstly, select
the most important influencing indicator of groundwater
level with grey correlation analysis (GCA), and then, use
the cloud generator (CG) of knowledge reasoning to predict
the groundwater level.

AbstractIt is well known that no uniform prediction approaches were obtained regarding ground water level, though
the neural network and some other so-called artificial intelligence methods consistently provide the smallest uncertainty
and different medians warranting further research on their
abilities. In the present paper, the lower reaches of Tarim
River is taken as the study area, a grey correlation analysis and
cloud generator (GCA-CG) based groundwater level prediction
model is proposed. The most important characteristic feature
of the novel model is that the observation data with uncertainty
is taken into account. First of all, based on the GCA theory, the
most important influencing indicator of groundwater level is
selected. And then, the CG of knowledge reasoning is applied to
predict the groundwater level. Finally, a numerical experiment
based on the historical observation data is performed to verify
the presented ground water level prediction model, which
shows us that the fitting precision is 91.09% before water
transportation and 87.84% after the water transportation.
From the theoretic foundation and experiment results, we can
see that the model could be widely used in other systems with
uncertainty.
Keywords-Grey Correlation Analysis (GCA); Cloud Generator (CG); Groundwater Level Prediction; Water Salinity;
Tarim River Component;

I. I NTRODUCTION
The 1321-kilometer Tarim River runs from west to east
along the northern edge of the Taklimakan Desert, reaches at
Taitema Lake finally. This river is the most important water
resources in semi-arid Xinjiang province in west north of
China, with over 8 million people living in oases along
its banks and in an alluvial plain downstream. However,
with the increasing desertification, due to excessive water
exploitation and use for irrigation, industrial and living
consumption in the upper and middle reaches of Tarim
River, its downstream, which extends further down from the
Daxihaizi Reservoir, has become completely dry ever since
1972. As a consequence, the lower reach of Tarim River
This work was partially supported by the Grant from National Key
Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, No. 2007CB714107),
NSFC of China (No. 50679098), the Scientific Research Foundation for
the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry, and
the Talent Recruitment Foundation of Huazhong University of Science and
Technology.

978-0-7695-3819-8/09 $26.00 2009 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/ICEET.2009.380

II. M ETHODOLOGY
Due to historical reasons, most sources have only limited
amounts of statistical records. And these limited amounts of
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records contain a great degree of uncertainty. Also due to

human influences, many statistical records show fluctuations
with large rises and falls without many typical distribution
patterns. Therefore, applying statistical methods can hardly
achieve many useful conclusions. The grey system theory is
firstly proposed by Chinese researcher Deng (1982) [2], and
developed by Liu [3] and others.

B. Cloud Model Theory

Describing the uncertainty between variables by concepts
is more natural and more generalized than doing it by
mathematics which is of certainty. Cloud model proposed
by Li (1995) [4] shows the uncertain mechanism during the
transformation between qualitative concepts and quantitative
values, which expresses qualitative knowledge by natural
languages, and represents the soft-reasoning ability in thinking with languages.
Let U be a universal set described by precise numbers,
and C be the qualitative concept related to U . If there is a
number x U , which randomly realizes the concept C, and
the certainty degree of X for C, i.e., [0, 1], is a random
value with stabilization tendency

A. Grey Correlation Analysis (GCA)

The grey correlation analysis remedies this defect found
in existing statistics when applied in the content of systems
analysis. It can be applied to cases of various sample
sizes and distributions with a relatively small amount of
computation. And in general, each application of GCA does
not result in disagreement between quantitative analysis and
qualitative analysis.
The fundamental idea of GCA is based on the observing
foundation of that the closeness of a relationship is judged
based on the similarity level of the geometric patterns of
sequence curves. The more similar, the curves are, the higher
degree of correlation between sequences, and vice versa.
Put into practice, the main idea of gray correlation analysis
is determining the relation between influence factors and
ground water lever according to the similarity of various
influence factors geometric curve changing trend. Closer the
shape curve, closer the relationship between the two, which
shows higher influence degree and vice versa. Similarity
can be described by correlation degree, and greater the
correlation degree, larger the similarity.
The Scheme is described as follows:

: U [0, 1],

Then the distribution of x on U is defined as a cloud, and

every x is defined as a cloud drop.
The overall property of a concept can be represented by
the numerical characters, which are the overall quantitative
property of the qualitative concept. We employ the expected
value Ex , the entropy En , and the hyper-entropy He to
represent the concept as a whole in the cloud model.
Ex : The mathematical expectation of the cloud drop
distributed in the universal set. Its the most classical sample
while quantifying the concept.
En : As the measure of uncertainty, it reflects the discrete
extent of the drops, and its also the measurement of this
and that, representing the value region in which the drop
is acceptable by the concept.
He : Its an uncertainty measure of the En , i.e., the secondorder entropy of the entropy, which is determined by both
randomness and fuzziness of the entropy.

1) Form the indicator time pattern series, and take

initial image on them. Secondly, conduct initialized series of the historical unit output x(0) =
{x(0) (1), x(0) (2), . . . , x(0) (n)} as the reference sequence X(0) , and the initialized series of indicators
all related as other behavioral sequences X(i0 ) , i0 =
1, 2, L, m.
2) Compute
relational
coefficients
with
the
formula
(i0 ) (j)
=
max max |X(i0 ) (j)X(0) (j)|
Where
|X(i0 ) (j)X(0) (j)|+ max max |X(i0 ) (j)X(0) (j)| ,
|X(i0 ) (j) X(0) (j)| is the absolute discrepancy
of X(i0 ) and X(0) at point j(j = 1, 2, L, m) is
discrimination coefficient. For practical case, we can
always take = 0.5.
3) Compute the correlations degree r(i0 ) between X(i0 )
and X(0) by

C. Cloud Generator Based Prediction

In this paper, we plan to utilize the reasoning by qualitative knowledge, which extracted from quantitative data
series, to implement the prediction. The cloud based qualitative knowledge reasoning regards to the concept as the fundamental expression, discovers qualitative knowledge from
data series. The cloud-based qualitative rule generator is
combined with the pre-condition cloud generator and postcondition cloud generator [5]. The prediction procedures
are described in Figure 1. Firstly, extract the qualitative
knowledge (Ex , En , He ) of historical observed value using
backward cloud generator (CG1 ). Then, generate the cloud
drops of the prediction indicator (which with the largest
grey correlation degree) and the prediction objective, using
a single-condition-single-rule generator.
Backward cloud generator is model of transformation
from a quantitative value to a qualitative concept. It maps
a quantity of precise data back into the qualitative concept
expressed by Ex , En , He , without a certainty degree, using

r(i0 ) =

x U, x (x).

1X
(i0 ) (j).
n j=1

4) Rank the grey relational grades of r(i0 ) from upper to

lower.

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1
2
3
4
5

Input: xa = [1.44 1.485 1.52 3.53 2.765],

xb = [5.14 5.39 5.36 5.81 7.05];
prediction input a = xa ;
Output: serials x
b
n = length(a);
[Exa, Ena, Hea] = back cloud(xa );
[Exb, Enb, Heb] = back cloud(xb );
for i = 1 : n do
Enna = randn(1) Hea + Ena;
(a(i)Exa)2

Figure 1.

Cloud generator based prediction.

8
9
10

only the value of xi for CG

based on the statistical
characters of the cloud.
In the single-condition-single-rule generator, if a specific
input a in the universal set U1 of the pre-condition activates
CGA , it will generate a certainty degree randomly. This
value reveals the activation strength on the qualitative rule
by a, and it acts as the input for the post-condition CG to
generate drop(b, ) randomly. If a activates the rising edge
of the pre-condition, then the output b by the rule generator
corresponds to the rising edge of the post-condition, and vice
versa.
Uncertainty is contained in this algorithm. For a certain
input a in U1 , it cant output a certain b. The certainty degree
randomly generated by CGA transits the uncertainty in U1
to U2 . The CGB outputs a random cloud drop drop(b, )
under the control of , so the drop drop(b, ) is also
uncertain. In this way, uncertainty is transformed in the
reasoning process by rule generators.
The CG part of our prediction model is described in
pseudo MATLAB code (with description) to illuminate the
algorithm scheme as follows Algorithm 1.

11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18

p(i) = e 2Enna2 ;
Ennb = randn(1) Heb + Enb;
if a(i) < Exa then
p
b(i) = Exb 2 log(p(i)) Ennb;
else
p
b(i) = Exb + 2 log p(i) Ennb;
end
end
end
function [bE x, bE n, bH e] = back cloud(x);
bE x = mean(x);
p
bE n = p
mean(|x b Ex|) /2;
bH e = var(x) b En2 ;
Algorithm 1: CG Prediction
Table I
THE GROUNDWATER LEVEL AND SALINITY BEFORE &
AFTER WATER TRANSPORTATION AT YINGSU SECTION
Distance
to
River (m)
150
250
350
450
750

III. EXPERIMENTS
According to observed sample analysis of groundwater
level and salinity variation in lower reaches of Tarim River,
Zhang (2003) made a grey correlation analysis on chemical
elements of groundwater and groundwater level before and
after surface ecological water transportation. The results
indicated that correlation between groundwater salinity and
groundwater level was highest with correlation degree of
0.863 after water transportation, which reflected that the
water transportation had much influence to the change of
groundwater salinity. The data for this study were taken
from the tables of the groundwater level and water quality table before/after water transportation at Yingsu section in [1], which consists of 5 entries of field observed
distance to river, groundwater lever, PH value, Salinity,
HCO3 , Cl , SO4++ , Ca++ , M g ++ , N a+ , K + . We scissor
the part of the dataset as our prediction model input listed
in Table I, and the prediction results are listed in Table II.

Before
Groundwater
lever (m)
5.14
5.39
5.36
5.81
7.05

Transp.
Salinity
1.44
1.485
1.52
3.53
2.765

After
Groundwater
lever (m)
3.16
3.57
4.58
5.42
6.8

Transp.
Salinity
1.365
1.446
1.642
2.645
2.855

Table II
C OMPARISON OF O BSERVED VALUE WITH F ITTING VALUE
Distance
to
River (m)
150
250
350
450
750

Before
Observed
lever (m)
5.14
5.39
5.36
5.81
7.05

Transp.
Fitting
lever (m)
5.68
5.23
5.14
6.56
6.20

After
Observed
lever (m)
3.16
3.57
4.58
5.42
6.8

Transp.
Fitting
lever (m)
3.1
3.14
4.04
5.76
5.92

IV. C ONCLUSION
This paper focused on the ground water lever prediction
of without solving the Richards equation, instead of the
combination GCA and CG theory. A novel prediction model
591

is presented based on the GCA and CG theory, which

provides an efficient scheme to avoid the limitation of
observed data with uncertainty and the complex feature to
solve the Richard equation. Additionally, the availability of
uncertainty estimates from the grey system theory provided
information about the reliability of the predictions. These
characteristics can be very useful to generate uncertainty
estimates of ground water lever, even when limited information about the soil is available. Although prediction errors
and confidence limits are often large, the ground water
lever estimate provided with the corresponding salinity data
may be accurate enough for most applications, and hence
will fill a need where hydraulic properties are not readily
available. The experimental results also show us that the
novel model takes considerations of data with uncertainty,
the fitting precision is 91.09% before water transportation
and 87.84% after the water transportation. After all, the
entries of the dataset provided in this paper is only 5, the
prediction precision will be improved with larger samples.
This model could be widely used in other systems with
uncertainty in practice.
R EFERENCES
[1] Zhang, H. F.; and Li, W. H; et al.;Compositor Analysis on
Correlation between Groundwater Level and Water Chemical
Contents in Lower Reaches of Tarim River. Arid Land Geography 26 (03): 260-263, 2003.
[2] Deng, J.. Control problems of gray systems Systems and
Control Letters 5 : 288-294, 1982.
[3] Liu, S. and Dang, Y., et al.. Gray system theory and application. Beijing, Science Press, 2004.
[4] Li Deyi. and M. Haijun, et al.. Membership clouds and
membership cloud generators. Journal of Computer Research
and Development 32 (6): 15-20, 1995.
[5] Li Deyi. Uncertainty reasoning based on cloud models in
controllers. Computers and Mathematics with Applications.
Elsevier Science, 35(3): 99-123, 1998.

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