Gene expression programming for total bed material load estimation--a case study

This paper presents Gene-Expression Programming (GEP), which is an extension to the genetic programming (GP) approach to predict the total bed material load for three Malaysian rivers. The GEP is employed without any restriction to an extensive database compiled from measurements in the Muda, Langat, and Kurau rivers. The GEP approach demonstrated a superior performance compared to other traditional sediment load methods. The coefficient of determination, R(2) (=0.97) and the mean square error, MSE (=0.057) of the GEP method are higher than those of the traditional method. The performance of the GEP method demonstrates its predictive capability and the possibility of the generalization of the model to nonlinear problems for river engineering applications.