Evaluating Time Series Models for Urban Wastewater Management: Predictive Performance, Model Complexity and Resilience

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Singh, Vipin, Ling, Tianheng, Chiaburu, Teodor, Biessmann, Felix
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Singh, Vipin
Ling, Tianheng
Chiaburu, Teodor
Biessmann, Felix
author_facet Singh, Vipin
Ling, Tianheng
Chiaburu, Teodor
Biessmann, Felix
contents Climate change increases the frequency of extreme rainfall, placing a significant strain on urban infrastructures, especially Combined Sewer Systems (CSS). Overflows from overburdened CSS release untreated wastewater into surface waters, posing environmental and public health risks. Although traditional physics-based models are effective, they are costly to maintain and difficult to adapt to evolving system dynamics. Machine Learning (ML) approaches offer cost-efficient alternatives with greater adaptability. To systematically assess the potential of ML for modeling urban infrastructure systems, we propose a protocol for evaluating Neural Network architectures for CSS time series forecasting with respect to predictive performance, model complexity, and robustness to perturbations. In addition, we assess model performance on peak events and critical fluctuations, as these are the key regimes for urban wastewater management. To investigate the feasibility of lightweight models suitable for IoT deployment, we compare global models, which have access to all information, with local models, which rely solely on nearby sensor readings. Additionally, to explore the security risks posed by network outages or adversarial attacks on urban infrastructure, we introduce error models that assess the resilience of models. Our results demonstrate that while global models achieve higher predictive performance, local models provide sufficient resilience in decentralized scenarios, ensuring robust modeling of urban infrastructure. Furthermore, models with longer native forecast horizons exhibit greater robustness to data perturbations. These findings contribute to the development of interpretable and reliable ML solutions for sustainable urban wastewater management. The implementation is available in our GitHub repository.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_17461
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evaluating Time Series Models for Urban Wastewater Management: Predictive Performance, Model Complexity and Resilience
Singh, Vipin
Ling, Tianheng
Chiaburu, Teodor
Biessmann, Felix
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Climate change increases the frequency of extreme rainfall, placing a significant strain on urban infrastructures, especially Combined Sewer Systems (CSS). Overflows from overburdened CSS release untreated wastewater into surface waters, posing environmental and public health risks. Although traditional physics-based models are effective, they are costly to maintain and difficult to adapt to evolving system dynamics. Machine Learning (ML) approaches offer cost-efficient alternatives with greater adaptability. To systematically assess the potential of ML for modeling urban infrastructure systems, we propose a protocol for evaluating Neural Network architectures for CSS time series forecasting with respect to predictive performance, model complexity, and robustness to perturbations. In addition, we assess model performance on peak events and critical fluctuations, as these are the key regimes for urban wastewater management. To investigate the feasibility of lightweight models suitable for IoT deployment, we compare global models, which have access to all information, with local models, which rely solely on nearby sensor readings. Additionally, to explore the security risks posed by network outages or adversarial attacks on urban infrastructure, we introduce error models that assess the resilience of models. Our results demonstrate that while global models achieve higher predictive performance, local models provide sufficient resilience in decentralized scenarios, ensuring robust modeling of urban infrastructure. Furthermore, models with longer native forecast horizons exhibit greater robustness to data perturbations. These findings contribute to the development of interpretable and reliable ML solutions for sustainable urban wastewater management. The implementation is available in our GitHub repository.
title Evaluating Time Series Models for Urban Wastewater Management: Predictive Performance, Model Complexity and Resilience
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17461