Improving Adaptive Runoff Forecasts in Data-Scarce Watersheds Through Personalized Federated Learning

Zaipeng Xie, Xiangqin Zhang, Yunfei Wang, Xuanyao Jie, Wenhao Fang, Yanping Cai

Abstract: Runoff forecasting plays a crucial role in water resource management and flood mitigation, but it often faces significant challenges due to data deficiency and decentralized datasets. Inadequate hydrological data in many watersheds hinders the development of accurate prediction models, while organizational barriers and concerns about data privacy lead to information silos, preventing effective collaborative modeling. To address these issues, we propose FedHydroDSW, a novel personalized federated learning framework for runoff forecasting in data-scarce watersheds. Our approach enables decentralized model training across multiple organizations without requiring direct data sharing, thus preserving data privacy. FedHydroDSW incorporates unique model similarity metrics and parameter adaptation methods, utilizing insights from data-rich areas to refine forecasts in data-scarce regions. Experiments on the CAMELS dataset show that FedHydroDSW significantly outperforms standalone and conventional federated learning methods, with an average 30.1% increase in NSE, and reductions of 28% in RAE and 26.6% in RMSE across multiple data-scarce basins. By enabling secure cross-silo learning, our FedHydroDSW strategy paves the way toward more equitable runoff forecasting globally. The customized training and pattern recognition techniques represent major progress in deploying federated intelligence for impactful hydrological predictions. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/xyjie37/FedHydroDSW.