Virtual Calibration of Cosmic Ray Sensor: Using Supervised Ensemble Machine Learning

Abstract

In this paper an ensemble of supervised machine learning methods has been investigated to virtually and dynamically calibrate the cosmic ray sensors measuring area wise bulk soil moisture. Main focus of this study was to find an alternative to the currently available field calibration method; based on expensive and time consuming soil sample collection methodology. Data from the Australian Water Availability Project (AWAP) database was used as independent soil moisture ground truth and results were compared against the conventionally estimated soil moisture using a Hydroinnova CRS-1000 cosmic ray probe deployed in Tullochgorum, Australia. Prediction performance of a complementary ensemble of four supervised estimators, namely Sugano type Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (S-ANFIS), Cascade Forward Neural Network (CFNN), Elman Neural Network (ENN) and Learning Vector Quantization Neural Network (LVQN) was evaluated using training and testing paradigms. An AWAP trained ensemble of four estimators was able to predict bulk soil moisture directly from cosmic ray neutron counts with 94.4% as best accuracy. The ensemble approach outperformed the individual performances from these networks. This result proved that an ensemble machine learning based paradigm could be a valuable alternative data driven calibration method for cosmic ray sensors against the current expensive and hydrological assumption based field calibration method.