Coastal Engineering Journal

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An artificial neural network based system for wave

height prediction

Elad Dakar, José Manuel Fernández Jaramillo, Isaac Gertman, Roberto

Mayerle & Ron Goldman

To cite this article: Elad Dakar, José Manuel Fernández Jaramillo, Isaac Gertman, Roberto
Mayerle & Ron Goldman (2023): An artificial neural network based system for wave height
prediction, Coastal Engineering Journal, DOI: 10.1080/21664250.2023.2190002

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21664250.2023.2190002

Published online: 21 Mar 2023.

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COASTAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL
https://doi.org/10.1080/21664250.2023.2190002

An artificial neural network based system for wave height prediction

a
Elad Dakar , José Manuel Fernández Jaramillob, Isaac Gertmana, Roberto Mayerleb and Ron Goldmana
a
Israel Oceanographic & Limnological Research, National Institute of Oceanography, Haifa, Israel; bForschungs- und Technologiezentrum
Westküste (FTZ), Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

We present a system for predicting the hourly significant wave height at a specific wave Received 20 July 2022
measurement station in the middle of Israel’s Mediterranean coast (Hadera). Our system uses Accepted 8 March 2023
an artificial neural network (ANN) composed of two sub-networks. We evaluate the importance KEYWORDS
of different inputs to the system. The input includes wind forecast data from the SKIRON Wave forecast; Artificial
atmospheric modeling system, wave forecast for the station’s location given by the SWAN neural network; Artificial
wave model, and observed wave data. Our system pre-processes the wind data using a spatial intelligence
filtering scheme and then enters it into the first sub-network in the form of a multidimensional
tensor. We take special care to interconnect the tensor elements through a dimensional
permutation that leads the ANN to sum elements along all the tensor’s dimensions. Our system
groups the output of the first sub-network with the rest of the input and feeds it to the second
sub-network that gives the prediction. Our ANN system outperforms the SWAN wave model in
estimating wave heights over 1.5 meters. We obtain the best performance when either all input
components are used or just wind and observations. Reimplementation of the system at
Ashkelon yields smaller improvements due to insufficient training data.

1. Introduction
Improving the accuracy of wave characteristic predic­
tions is beneficial for the safety of maritime traffic, near­
shore constructions, and offshore platforms. Correctly
forecasting high wave conditions is particularly impor­
tant as they pose a risk to small boats (e.g. patrol boats,
fishing boats) and may hinder air-sea rescue operations.
The current standard method to make such predictions
is to use numerical models. A numerical model uses the
initial state of the sea and the wind forcing as input data.
Current numerical models explicitly represent the phy­
sics relevant to the development of the sea state, includ­
ing nonlinear wave interactions and two-way coupling
between wind and waves.
In recent years, using ANN to provide wave predic­
tions has shown it to be a valuable tool. ANN is
a computing system based on a collection of inter-
connected computational units called artificial neurons.
By optimizing the neurons’ parameters, it is possible to
make the network of neurons emulate complex rela­
tions between input and output. Most ANN wave-
prediction systems receive input of time series from
observational systems. For example, López, López, and
Iglesias (2015), Castro et al. (2014), Tsai, Lin, and Shen
(2002), Fan, Xiao, and Dong (2020), and Miky et al. (2021)
use observations from buoys stations to predict wave
parameters. Of the five articles, Fan et al. are unique in
using long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network.
They also use input from a single grid point of SWAN
(see p. 4) in a complementary calculation. Sadeghifar
et al. (2022) also use observations from buoys stations
but implicitly include the effects of wind in processing
wave data during both the training and testing stages.
Their article presents various soft computing methods in
addition to ANN. Tsuda, Kim, and Matsumi (2016) used
atmospheric observations in addition to observations
from buoys stations, and Kim, Pan, and Mase (2019)
used observations and derived parameters of typhoon
systems. Gómez-Orellana et al. (2022) used similar types
of input data but differentiated their work by using
weighted means of the four reanalysis nodes located
around each buoy station. Using these means enables
them to gain atmospheric data that represents the con­
ditions at each buoy. The training algorithm their article
presents is the Multi-Task Evolutionary Artificial Neural
Network (MTEANN), which is substantially different from
the backpropagation and gradient descent algorithm
used in our work. Yang et al. (2021) also use similar
types of input data but employ the time series decom­
position method of STL and the input data pre-
processing method of positional encoding. Because
their input data have the form of a 2D tensor, their
system uses a convolutional neural network (CNN).
Similarly, Guan (2020) also uses CNN but also LSTM
neural network. Makarynskyy et al. (2005) have sug­
gested using a wave model as input along with
observed data; however, the primary approach is to
use ANN as a replacement for the high computational

CONTACT Elad Dakar edakar2k@gmail.com

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
© 2023 Japan Society of Civil Engineers
2 E. DAKAR ET AL.
costs of the numerical spectral wave model.
Shamshirband et al. (2020) have extracted meteorologi­
cal time series from a reanalysis of meteorological data
as input to their system.
In contrast to these works, the system developed by
Tom et al. (2019) uses gridded meteorological time
series as inputs instead of a single or several stations’
time series. This meteorological grid superimposes the
Sea of Japan. To process this data type, the paper uses
a CNN, which takes advantage of the spatial relation to
reduce the number of sought-out parameters.
In this paper, we present an implementation of an
artificial neural network (ANN) that aims to improve
the wave height forecasts given by a numerical model.
Our system takes input from observed wave conditions
at an offshore station, the numerical forecast of
a spectral wave model at a single grid cell near that
station, and the gridded forecast data from the atmo­
spheric model in a region that covers the station. Our
approach is rather innovative in combining different
inputs from different sources and data structures. This
is done by spatially pre-processing the multivariate
wind atmospheric data and inserting the result into
a point-wise convolutional ANN. The output of this
ANN enters into a fully connected ANN along with
the rest of the input. Our motivation is to take advan­
tage of each input’s strengths to compensate for the
others’ shortcomings. The atmospheric forecast input
we use provides information on the local synoptic
system but only covers a part of the fetch that influ­
ences the output wave height. The numerical wave
model does simulate the whole wave response to
storm events, but it does not establish itself in actual
observations and tends to overestimate the wave
height. The observational data indicate the current
state of the waves but do not carry information on
the future since the station is located downwind in
most synoptic conditions.
2. Material and methods
2.1. System and datasets
The SWAN (Simulating WAves Nearshore) numerical
wave model generates numerical wave forecasts that
are used in this paper. SWAN is a third-generation
wave model, developed at Delft University of
Technology, that computes the wind-generated wave
field in coastal regions and inland waters (Holthuijsen
2007). In 2009, Israel Oceanographic and Limnological
Research (IOLR) set up a wave forecasting system. This
system uses a 10 m wind forecast from the SKIRON
forecasting system (Kallos et al. 1997). The SWAN
wave model exists on the same grids that an older
system used (Gertman et al. 2000):
A coarse grid covers the entire Mediterranean at
a spatial resolution of 0.5 degrees, and a finer resolution
grid that is nested within it, covers the eastern
Mediterranean east of longitude 22°E at a spatial resolu­
tion of 0.125 degrees. The directional spectral grid in
both regions is the same: 25 logarithmically distributed
frequencies between 0.063 Hz and 1 Hz and 24 direc­
tions. The main issue within the system has been the
underestimation of the wind forcing. At the time of its
setup, Gertman et al. (2005) performed a simple calibra­
tion procedure, and found that the system works best
with a factor of 1.29 to the 10 m wind field.
Nevertheless, using a single coefficient to correct the
wind resulted in gross overestimations in stormy events.
As in some of the works above, we try to estimate
wave characteristics in one specific location nearshore
by using observed wave data as input data. Our system
uses the wave height at the IOLR Hadera Meteomarine
Monitoring Station (Global Sea Level Observing System
Station #80), whose location is near the center of the
Israeli Mediterranean coastline, 2 km off the shore, at the
end of a coal terminal. The station contains an RDI work­
horse ADCP instrument that provides hourly wave sta­
tistics where the water depth is about 26 m (https://
isramar.ocean.org.il/isramar2009/Hadera/). The wave
statistics at this station provide a good representation
of the wave field along the rest of the Israeli coastline. In
section 2.2, we re-implement the system at a second
monitoring station in Ashkelon. Since the station at
Ashkelon has been active for shorter duration than at
Hadera, we only use the Ashkelon station data to exam­
ine the robustness of the system structure.
The Israeli coastline location is in the southeastern
corner of the Mediterranean. Cyclones passing over the
Mediterranean Sea during the winter are the leading
cause of high waves. The wave heights during the
storm depend on the orientation and strength of the
cyclone as it makes landfall. In particular, the strong
southerlies to north westerlies are part of the cold front
of the cyclone. Moreover, cyclones passing over the east­
ern Mediterranean generate swell waves that add to the
wave height. The trajectories of cyclones can vary signifi­
cantly (Karas and Zangvil 1999), which leads to variations
in the intensity of the storms. Our observations show that
storms with significant wave heights greater than 5 m
occur yearly on average. Other synoptic systems (see
(Alpert et al. 2004) for their characterization), such as
the Red Sea Trough (RST) and locally formed thermal
cyclones, may also produce significant wave heights
above 1.5 m due to locally intensified winds.
In this work, we use data from the winter seasons
(November to February) in which high wave conditions
are common. This is motivated by our desire to provide
predictions at times when the wave model error is
most prominent, and the importance of the prediction
to decision makers is highest. Moreover, the synoptic
variability in the winter is higher than in the summer,
so the training set contains a more extensive variety of
synoptic conditions.

ANN is a computational model inspired by biologi­
cal neural networks (Hassoun 1995). The model com­
prises a network of mathematical operators, with each
operator functioning as a single neuron. The network
arrangement is a chain of neuron layers in which the
input for a single layer comes from the output of the
previous layer in the chain. The first and last layers of
the chain are the input and output layers, respectively.
The structure of the layers is usually predetermined,
and a process of optimization known as training deter­
mines the parametrization of individual neurons. The
training data set contain batches of samples of both
the input data and the desired outcome. During the
training of a neural network, a single predefined func­
tion computes the cost for each batch of samples. The
cost function represents the difference between the
processed and the desired output of the network. The
training process searches for the optimal parametriza­
tion of the neurons that will minimize the cost. In this
way, the trained system carries the meaning of statis­
tical best fit to the training dataset.
Among the different architectures, we have tested,
the system we denote as ANN0 obtains the best results
to predict the significant wave heights at Hadera sta­
tion. In this section, we will describe the design of this
system that is the basis for the prediction process.
Section 2.2 will discuss alternative system configura­
tions to show the effect of changing the amount and
type of inputs applied to the prediction system.
We created the ANN using the TensorFlow free and
open-source software library in Python programming
language (Abadi et al. 2015). We trained the ANN at the
system’s core to minimize the errors of its output in
comparison to the observed data of Hadera station at
the predicted times.
In deciding what type of ANN to use in our system,
we opted for a feedforward neural network. We
decided not to use an LSTM neural network because
Figure 1. Temporal scope of the inputs and outputs of the ANN system. Forecasts and observations from the three days d-2 to
d are presented. Each row represents the temporal coverage of the forecast/observation. A wavy pattern indicates the data that
functions as input for the ANN forecast of day “d;” diagonal lines pattern indicates the data that the same ANN forecast is
compared to during training, validating, and testing sessions.
COASTAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL 3
the usage of this type of neural network is mostly for
dealing with the vanishing gradient problem
(Hochreiter 1998). This problem exists for deep neural
networks, i.e., networks with many hidden layers. We
believe that the network we use is not deep enough to
justify the use of LSTM – we use 11 layers between our
input and output, and part of our input only goes
through 3 layers (these numbers include the input
and output layers). The absence of the vanishing gra­
dient problem also led us to avoid batch normalization.
Figure 1, (p. 7) presents the temporal scope of the
inputs and outputs of our ANN system.
Our system takes input from the SWAN forecast for
the unmasked grid cell (of the east Mediterranean grid)
closest to the Hadera station (34.75°E, 32.375°N; see
Figure 2, p. 9); the time series is taken at the 24
h coinciding with the ANN prediction period. Due to
operational considerations at IOLR, historically, the
starting points of the SWAN forecasts have been 12 h
after those of the SKIRON forecasts. Because of this, our
system takes the SWAN time series from two consecu­
tive forecasts (see Figure 1, p. 7).
In order to use the wind data, the system takes
the data on a 65 × 65 spatial sub-grid of the
SKIRON 0.05° resolution grid, whose center is at
the Hadera measurement station. The sub-grid cov­
ers a square with a side length of 3.25° (approxi­
mately 325 km). Our reasoning for this selection is
to provide the ANN with sufficient spatial informa­
tion needed for deducing the synoptic system
orientation regarding Hadera. We would specifi­
cally like to have an indication of the passing of
warm fronts during storm events and RST orienta­
tion (see (Alpert et al. 2004) for a description of the
synoptic system in Israel).
For each grid cell, our system constructs
a concatenation of four time series taken from recent
SKIRON forecasts (see Figure 1, p. 7): the first 24 h of
4 E. DAKAR ET AL.
Figure 2. Schematic description of the 65 × 65 wind-data grid around Hadera and the decomposition and coarsening processes.
The red arrows are the wind vectors. The black arrows are Hadera-oriented components. The red dots mark locations of non-
masked cells of the SWAN east Mediterranean grid that are closest to their respective station (Hadera/Ashkelon). Our system takes
the SWAN forecasts from these cells.
the latest 3 days (d-2, d-1, and d) and the forecast of the
(d-1) day for the 24 h coinciding with the ANN predic­
tion period. The resulting time dimension has a length
of 96 h. The reasoning for taking overlapping time
series is to allow the ANN to use different versions of
the forecast for the same period.
Our system applies a sequential coarsening process to
the wind velocity. We use this process to achieve a spatial
smoothing of the wind data, thus reducing the noise in
the data (Plokhenko and Menzel 2001). An additional
benefit is reducing the number of grid cells we insert
into the ANN and, hence, the computational burden.
Before the coarsening process, we decompose the
velocity vector into two components. One component
points to the center of the grid (i.e. to the “Hadera” cell),
and the second is orthogonal to it (see Figure 2, p. 9).
Averaging these components of the wind data provides
two independent vector components. We chose this
decomposition, assuming that each component has its
own particular contribution to the waves’ properties at
the prediction point. For the Hadera grid cell, our sys­
tem takes into account the magnitude of the wind
velocity and the eastward component of the wind.
Our system does the coarsening by replacing 2 × 2
grid cells off the Hadera Meridian or Hadera line of
latitude with a single cell containing the averages of
the components in the four grid cells. On the Hadera
Meridian (the Hadera line of latitude), our system
replaces the 2 × 1 (1 × 2) grid cells with a weighted
average of the 2 × 3 (3 × 2) grid cells with weights
2 3
� � 1 1
1 2 1 14
1
8 (8 2 2 5).
1 2 1
1 1
In the Hadera cell, the values of the wind velocity
magnitude and eastwards component remain the
same in the new smaller grid.
Our system uses the coarsening process twice, redu­
cing the spatial grid size from 65 × 65 to 33 × 33 and then
to 17 × 17. The two wind components are arranged along
a separate dimension, resulting in a 96 × 17 × 17 × 2 ten­
sor for each daily pre-processes SKIRON forecast.
Post coarsening, the total number of inputs for the
system is 55,560, so the number of parameters in
a simple 3-layer feedforward ANN will be over 3‧109.
Instead, the ANN network comprises two subnet­
works (see Figure 3, p. 11). The first subnetwork
(denoted wind-ANN) is for reducing the dimensional­
ity and size of the wind input before its integration
with the rest of the inputs. The Wind-ANN replaces
two fully connected layers with a sequence of point­
wise convolutions, iterating over all dimensions of the
tensor twice. As a result, the number of parameters in
the wind-ANN is only 30,117. The second ANN
(denoted forecast-ANN) takes as input the concatena­
tion of the output of the wind-ANN, the deterministic
SWAN forecast from a single cell of the SWAN east
Mediterranean grid, and observed wave data from the
Hadera station. The second ANN processes this input
to produce the final prediction via a simple fully con­
nected 3-layers ANN.
 COASTAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL 5

Figure 3. A schematic chart of the ANN structure and data flow. Each block denotes a 3D tensor of the wind dataset; in reality, the
wind dataset is a 4D tensor. Each line inside a face of a block represents a vector within the tensor. Each layer sums along a specific
dimension of the tensor. The forecast-ANN input is the concatenation of the Wind-ANN output, Observation data time series, and
SWAN data time series.

The activation function of each neuron in both sub­
networks is given by (Karlik and Vehbi 2010)
fa ðWS þ BÞ ¼ LReLUðWS þ B; α ¼ 0:1Þ;
where WS is the weighted sum, B is the bias and
� neurons in the layer.
x for x > 0
LReLUðx; αÞ; : (2)
αx else
For training purposes, we arrange all the 4-dimen­
sional wind datasets along a fifth dimension. The rest
of this section will ignore this dimension, as it is non-
essential for the system description.
Each neuron layer in the wind-ANN is a fully con­
nected one (Ramsundar and Zadeh 2018) operating
along a specific dimension in the process of point-
wise convolution: For every neuron, a weighted sum
is computed (each neuron with its weights) with the
input-tensor elements along this dimension. For exam­
ple, the output tensor of the 1st layer is given by
! manner, the ANN performs a point-wise convolution
ð1Þ
X ð0Þ
Tijkl ¼ fa Wl, � Tijk, þ Bl (3)
,
Where i is the time index, j is the reduced-latitude
index, k is the reduced-longitude index, l is the neuron
index of the first layer, ,is a bound index along the
same dimension as the “velocity component,” and
Wl, ; Bl are the weights and biases of the first layer,
respectively. The resulting output tensor has the
same dimension as the input tensor except for the
(1)
dimension on which the layer operates. The number
of elements along that dimension is the number of
Since each layer operates along its dimension, it
does not create an interaction between elements
along the other dimensions. To create interactions
between all the tensor elements, the layers operate
along all the different dimensions sequentially twice
(see Figure 3, p. 11). For example, the output of the 2nd
layer is given by
!
ð2Þ
X ð1Þ
Tijkl ¼ fa Wk~k � Tij~kl þ Bk (4)
~k
Note that k is now the neuron index of the second
layer in the 2nd layer (going from 1 to 25). In this
along every dimension of the input tensor, two times
along each dimension.
The first four layers increase the sizes of the tensor
by factors of (1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 2.25) along each dimension.
Our system post-processes the resulting tensor of the
wind-ANN and takes a 1D tensor with a length of 32
from it. The numbers of neurons in the eight layers of
6 E. DAKAR ET AL.

Table 1. Size of the tensor dimensions through the layers of Wind-ANN. Light gray indicates the input dimension of the next layer.
Dark gray indicates the output dimension from the layer.
Layer 1 Layer 2 Layer 3 Layer 4 Layer 5 Layer 6 Layer 7 Layer 8
Dimension size Input output output output output output output output output
“Time” 96 96 96 96 216 216 216 216 32
“Latitude” 17 17 17 25 25 25 25 25 25
“Longitude” 17 17 25 25 25 25 25 25 25
“Component” 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

the wind-ANN are 3, 25, 25, 216, 3, 25, 25, and 32.
Table 1 shows the shape and size of the tensor as it
passes through the different layers.
The input to the forecast-ANN is the concatena­
tion of the result of the post-procession of the
wind-ANN output with Hadera observed wave data
and with the SWAN model forecast near Hadera.
The forecast-ANN comprises three fully connected
layers. The number of neurons in the first
and second layers equals the size of the input vec­
tor (i.e. 104). The number of neurons in the final
output layer is 24. The forecast-ANN produces
a significant wave height (Hm0 ) prediction for 0–23
h, with which the system calculates the cost func­
tion value that is used for the entire ANN training.
Eq. (5) gives the cost function that the system uses,
which is a weighted sum of several norms.
" #
i¼N
W2 X W3 i¼N
X1
cost ¼ W1 � jPi Oi j þ jPiþ1 Pi j
N i¼1 N 1 i¼1
W4 imaxXþ6
þ � jPi Oi j
13 i 6
max
of 2017–2018. This approach could be suboptimal
in minimizing the RMSE of the prediction errors in
the testing period. However, every iteration with
new Wl parameters results in a well-trained ANN,
so the under/over fitting problem of the ANN
parameters is solved regardless of how close the
system is to the RMSE minimum. The ADAM
Algorithm (Kingma and Ba n.d.) executed the
training of the ANN. The ADAM Algorithm is
a type of back propagation and gradient descent
algorithm. It is different from the “classical” back
propagation and gradient descent algorithm by
having a specific learning rate for each weight in
the network. Each specific learning rate is also
adaptive and changes during the training process.
When the cost function had descended to a certain
value during the training process, our system saved the
state (i.e. the weights and biases) of the ANN for the first
time. After that point, the system saved the state of the
ANN whenever the cost function value descended to
a value smaller by a certain constant from the previous
saving value. Thus, the training process resulted in 31

(5) ANN candidates that ranged in cost values from 0.4 m to

Where Pi and Oi are the ANN prediction and observation
at the i-th hour, respectively. N is the number of hours
(i.e. 24). The hour imax is the hour of the largest misfit
between prediction and observation. The Wl parameters
are the weights for the terms of the loss function, with
values W1 ¼ 0:93; W2 ¼ 0:7; W3 ¼ 0:3; W4 ¼ 0:07.
The second term is for producing a smoother forecast.
The third term serves to minimize the maximum error
given by the system, which is a critical requirement for
a prediction system.
2.2. System training and sensitivity testing
Using the 2-Fold Cross-Validation method (Burman
1989), we have trained the ANN0 system with data
from the seven winters between 2009–2016. The
winter of 2016–2017 was the validating period.
The winter of 2017–2018 was the testing period
in which we compared the performance of differ­
ent optimized ANN systems. The metric for the
optimization was the cost function. We set the
Wl parameters in the cost function (see eq.(3),
p. 12) by minimizing the root mean square of
the prediction errors of the ANN for the winter
0.1 m. Through the evaluation of the candidates’ perfor­
mances in the validating session, we have found that
the ANN corresponding to the cost value of 0.12 m (for
the seven winters 2009–2016) as the optimal one for
predictions, i.e., the one that minimizes the cost function
for the winter of 2016–2017. This ANN is different from
the one that minimizes the cost function for the training
session, averting the possibility of overfitting. For that
reason, there is no need to use the dropout method. Our
system thus uses this ANN candidate for predictions. We
approximately observed the same range of Hm0 values
during the training (0.01–6.62 m) and validating (0.04–
6.49 m) periods, as well as during the winter of 2017–
2018 (0.02–6.71 m).
To test the system’s sensitivity to the starting hour, we
conducted a series of 23 ANN training and validating
sessions, resulting in what we denote as “time-shifted”
ANNs. In each session, both the input data and the
observed data at the predicted times are shifted in time
by an integer number of hours, emulating a prediction at
a starting hour different than 0 h. For each shift, there is
thus a different optimized state of the ANN.
To estimate the reliability of the ANN systems with
different types of wind filtration schemes, we compare
the performance of ANN0 to that of two other ANN

systems with different types of averaging. The system
denoted as ANN1 applies averaging to the original
eastward and northward wind-velocity components
provided by SKIRON. The system denoted as ANN2
takes only the component in the direction of the
Hadera cell. ANN2 takes the wind velocity magnitude
in the Hadera grid cell as the data for this cell. The
structure of the wind-ANN in ANN1 remains the same
as in ANN0; however, the removal of wind components
in ANN2 reduces the number of dimensions in the
wind-ANN tensor. Thus, the wind-ANN in ANN2 has
six layers processing a 3-dimensional tensor.
To test the system’s sensitivity to a reduction in the
number of input data types (wind, SWAN, and observa­
tions), we conducted six ANN training and validating
sessions. In three of the sessions, we omitted one
element of the input data (e.g. the SWAN data). In
the other three, we omitted two elements of the
input data. For each omittance, we changed the num­
ber of neurons in the forecast-ANN to fit it to the
structure of the remaining data.
To further estimate the system robustness and
the usability of the technique in places other than
Hadera station, we have implemented a copy of
the ANN0 system for IOLR Ashkelon Meteomarine
Monitoring Station, which we denote as ANN0-
Ashkelon. This station is located in the southern
part of the Israeli Mediterranean coastline, 2 km off
the shore, at the end of a coal terminal. The station
contains an RDI workhorse ADCP instrument that
provides hourly wave statistics where the water
depth is about 26 m. Unfortunately, the station
has been active for fewer years than the station
at Hadera. The data that was available covered the
3 years of 2012–2015 and the 2 two years of 2017–
2019. In order to implement ANN0-Ashkelon the
training period was the 2012–2015 winters, the
validating period was the 2017–2018 winter, and
the testing period was the 2018–2019 winter. The
values of Hm0 reached 6.21 m during the training
period, 6.37 m during the validating period, and
4.51 m during the testing period. Figure 4 exhibits
the distribution of Hm0 for the training periods of
Hadera and Ashkelon. As in ANN0, SWAN data was
obtained from the nearest grid point of the SWAN
model (34.375°E, 31.625°N; see Figure 2, p. 9). Wind
data were obtained for a 65 × 65 spatial sub-grid of
the SKIRON 0.05° resolution grid, whose center is
at the Ashkelon measurement station as in ANN0.
Table 2 shows the ANNs that we have trained and
validated:
3. Results and discussion
In this section, we present the results of predictions by
all the ANN systems discussed in section 2.2 for the
testing period, i.e., the winter of 2017–2018.
COASTAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL 7
Figures 5–7 (pp. 18–20) give the (predictions) scat­
ter plots for the SWAN, ANN0, and ANN1 systems,
respectively. One can see the improved performance
of ANN0 over SWAN. Whereas SWAN can overestimate
the wave height by as much as 100%, with a difference
of up to 5 m, ANN0 predictions stay within a range of 1
m from the observations except for some underestima­
tion (about 2 m) for events in which the wave heights
are over 5 m. The scattering of the ANN1 system is
greater than that of ANN0, with a more significant
underestimation of high waves (see also Table 3, p. 21).
To compare the performance of different systems at
stormy events, we computed statistical values only for
observations greater than or equal to 1.5 m; we denote
these values with the subscript “ > 1:5m.” Table 3
(p. 21) summarizes the values of the root-mean-
square-error (RMSE > 1:5m ), the coefficient of determina­
tion (R2 ), and the cost function for the testing period
(2017–2018 winter). Figure 8 (p. 22) is a Taylor diagram
(Taylor 2001) of the different systems and displays the
standard deviation (σ > 1:5m ) of the predictions, Pearson
correlation coefficient, and the centered root-mean-
square-error (CRMSE > 1:5m ), all for the observations
greater or equal 1.5 m. The Taylor diagram evaluates
the degree of correspondence between observations
and predictions. This allows the viewer to determine
the model that achieves the highest correlation,
Lowest CRMSE > 1:5m , and best agreement with the
observed standard deviation. One should note that
RMSE > 1:5m and CRMSE > 1:5m are related by the formula
RMSE2> 1:5m ¼ CRMSE2> 1:5m þ MBE2> 1:5m (6)
Where MBE > 1:5m is the mean bias error for observa­
tions greater than or equal to 1.5 m.
The observed σ > 1:5m for the testing period (denoted
by σo;v> 1:5m ) is 1.03 m. This value is similar to the values
σ > 1:5m of the training and validating periods, which are
0:88m and 0:98m, respectively. This indicates that the
wave conditions during the testing period are similar to
those of the training and validating periods.
The wave height forecasts of the SWAN system
during stormy events are worse (in terms of
RMSE > 1:5m and CRMSE > 1:5m ) than the prediction of
ANN0 by a factor of about three. The Taylor diagram
confirms that averaging the Hadera directed and
orthogonal components (ANN0) gives better predic­
tions than those produced by averaging the original
northward and eastward components (ANN1). The
ANN2 system performs worse than ANN0.
Table 3 (p. 21) and Figure 8 (p. 22) reveal how
critical each input data type is to the ANN’s ability
to predict wave height. Using only the observations
as input data give worse results than using any
other configuration. The other configurations give
results that are not drastically different from one
another. The RMSE > 1:5m difference between two
8 E. DAKAR ET AL.

Table 2. Details of the authors` various ANNs trained and validated.

System name Wind data1 SWAN forecast Observations data
ANN0 ✓ ✓ ✓
ANN1 Uses the eastward and northward wind-velocity components ✓ ✓
ANN2 Uses only the directed component ✓ ✓
No-winds ANN ✗ ✓ ✓
No-SWAN ANN ✓ ✗ ✓
No-observations ANN ✓ ✓ ✗
Only winds ANN2 ✓ ✗ ✗
Only SWAN ANN ✗ ✓ ✗
Only observations ANN ✗ ✗ ✓
23 “time-shifted” versions of ANN0 ✓ ✓ ✓
ANN0-Ashkelon ✓ ✓ ✓
1 If an ANN input data does not include the wind data, there is no wind-ANN subnetwork in its structure.
2 In this system, wind-ANN has a 24-neuron output layer and no forecast-ANN subnetwork in its structure.

Figure 4. Distribution of significant wave’s heights for the training period of Hadera (2009–2016, left) and Ashkelon (2012–2015,
right).

Figure 5. Winter of 2017–2018, scatter plot of the SWAN system at Hadera.

 COASTAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL 9

Figure 6. Winter of 2017–2018, scatter plot of the ANN0 system.

Figure 7. Winter of 2017–2018, scatter plot of ANN1 system.

such systems is less than 25 cm, much smaller than systems can be considered advantageous compared
the variability of the wave height in storm events. In to other soft computing wave prediction systems
addition, the R2 values we obtained for these (e.g. see Table 1 in (Miky et al. 2021)).
10 E. DAKAR ET AL.

Table 3. Cost function, RMSE > 1:5m , and R2 values for the SWAN system and various ANN
systems described above.
System name Cost function [m] RMSE > 1:5m ½m� R2
1 SWAN at Hadera 0.66 1.67 0.3
2 ANN0 0.19 0.49 0.93
3 ANN1 0.23 0.58 0.89
4 ANN2 0.24 0.59 0.9
6 No-winds ANN 0.21 0.67 0.88
7 No-SWAN ANN 0.2 0.48 0.92
8 No-observations ANN 0.21 0.53 0.90
9 Only winds ANN 0.29 0.6 0.85
10 Only SWAN ANN 0.24 0.72 0.86
11 Only observations ANN 0.34 1.09 0.7
12 SWAN at Ashkelon 0.5 1.3 0.2
13 ANN0-Ashkelon 0.27 0.62 0.77

Although the difference is not significant, one

Figure 8. Taylor diagram of the SWAN system and various ANN
systems described above.
can see that some systems perform slightly better
than others in terms of RMSE > 1:5m and CRMSE > 1:5m
values. Using only the wind data as an input gives
better results than using both the observations
and the SWAN as input data. Within the systems
that take two types of input data, the system that
omits the wind data performs the worst, whereas
the system that omits SWAN performs as well as
ANN0.
To estimate the sensitivity of the ANN to the
prediction period starting hour, we compared
a series of 23 ANN pairs. The first ANN in all the
pairs was ANN0, receiving shifted input data and
predicting for a shifted period. The second ANN in
each pair had the same structure as ANN0 but was
optimized (by training and validating processes)
for a specific time shift in both the input and
desired output datasets. Figure 9 presents the
RMSE > 1:5m results for each time shift (winter
2017–2018).

Figure 9. RMSE > 1:5m as a function of the shift forward from midnight for winter 2017–2018 for shift-optimized and non-optimized ANNs.
 COASTAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL 11

Figure 10. Taylor diagrams of the time-shifted ANNs series. Left: optimized; Right: non-optimized.

Figure 11. Hourly significant wave height at Hadera station - winter 2017–2018 versus ANN0 and SWAN predictions.

Figure 12. Hourly significant wave height at Hadera station - winter 2017–2018 versus ANN1 and SWAN predictions.
12 E. DAKAR ET AL.
Figure 13. Zoom in on the hourly significant wave height at Hadera station - winter 2017–2018 versus ANN0 and SWAN
predictions.
Figure 10 (p. 24) presents the Taylor diagrams of the
optimized and non-optimized time-shifted ANN.
When looking at Figure 9 (p. 24) and Figure 10, one
can see that applying the optimization process to each
time shift does not give significant benefit in forecast­
ing storm events when compared to using ANN0 with
shifted inputs. The maximum absolute difference
between the RMSE > 1:5m of optimized and the non-
optimized systems is 0.18 m, which is small compared
to σo;v
> 1:5m . Figure 10 shows that the results of the non-
optimized system are relatively close together, with
almost the same correlation coefficient and general
overestimation of σo;v > 1:5m . The results for the optimized
systems are more scattered over the Taylor diagram
Figure 14. Zoom in on the hourly significant wave height at Hadera station - winter 2017–2018 versus ANN1 and SWAN
predictions.
and exhibit worse correlation coefficient values.
Examination of the cost function values suggests that
the scattering of the results is within the variability of
the optimization process.
Figures 11 and 12 (pp. 25–26) show the perfor­
mances of the SWAN, ANN0, and ANN1 systems during
the stormier period in the winter of 2017–2018. Figures
13 and 14 are their respective zoom-ins. This helps to
visualize the performance improvement in the wave
heights and the timing of a storm evolution.
The most apparent insight one can have from
Figures 11 and 12 is that the ANN systems are free
from the gross overestimation events that the SWAN
system has. The ANN systems’ underestimations of
 COASTAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL 13

Figure 15. Winter of 2018–2019, scatter plot of the SWAN system at Ashkelon.

Figure 16. Winter of 2018–2019, scatter plot of the ANN0-Ashkelon system.

events are also better than those of the SWAN system. advantage over the ANN1 concerning the timing of
Although both ANN0 and ANN1 systems vastly out­ the storm events: one can see this on Jan. 4th, 14th,
perform SWAN, we can see that ANN0 has some and Dec. 31st.
14 E. DAKAR ET AL.
Figure 17. Hourly significant wave height at Hadera station - winter 2018–2019 versus ANN0-Ashkelon and SWAN predictions.
Figures 15 and 16 give scatter plots for the SWAN
and ANN0-Ashkelon systems, respectively. One can see
the improved performance of ANN0-Ashkelon over
SWAN. Figure 17 shows the performances of the
ANN0-Ashkelon system as well as the performance of
SWAN at Ashkelon during the stormier period in the
winter of 2018–2019. As in Figure 11, we can see that
SWAN overestimates high wave conditions in
Ashkelon. The overestimation can reach 250% with
a prediction of about 5 m when in reality only 2 m
storm was observed. The ANN0-Ashkelon system
shows improvement in the prediction so that the
error of ANN0-Ashkelon remains below 2.5 m.
However, the reduction in error is not as strong as
the reduction brought about by ANN0. Similarly, the
performance of ANN0-Ashkelon shown in Table 3 in
terms of RMSE > 1:5m and R2 is better than the perfor­
mance of SWAN but not as good as other ANN systems
in Hadera. The main reason for the poor performance
in ANN0-Ashkelon is most likely the result of insuffi­
cient training data. Specifically, Figure 4 shows that for
high wave heights (above 1.5 m), the distribution of
events is monotonously decreasing in Hadera, whereas
the data from Ashkelon does not show this behavior.
As the probability of extreme events should decrease
with their intensity, we infer that the number of sam­
ples (winter storms) in Ashkelon is too low.
4. Conclusions
In this paper, we show that it is possible to train an
ANN system using available forecasts and observations
to predict the hourly significant wave height at
a specific wave measurement station. The prediction
given by such a system outperforms the forecast of the
operational SWAN system at IOLR. Adding a trained
ANN to the existing operational chain does not require
a high computational cost.
We propose a scheme in which we re-project the
wind components before averaging. Using this scheme
on the input data causes the trained ANN to give
better predictions than using the typical eastward
and northward components.
Our results also show that the wind input data is the
most valuable to the successful predictions by the ANN
and the observations are the least valuable data. The
wind’s more significant impact may result from the
larger number of degrees of freedom that the wind
information contributes to the system. The more neg­
ligible contribution of the observational wave informa­
tion to the prediction quality of high wave events is
reasonable because the rise of wave height is related
to short-term synoptic events. One can also conclude
that none of the system’s inputs is crucial to the
improved performance during stormy events.
Although the ANN system that did not use SWAN
performed best, the much simpler ANN system that
used SWAN and observations still provided a useful
forecast. The fact that the ANN can perform as well
without SWAN may also indicate that the additional
information that the SWAN forecast carries (e.g. the
contribution of swell waves from outside of the wind
domain) is still reproducible from the wind informa­
tion. Future examination of summertime synoptic con­
ditions – namely the Persian Trough – in which swells
are more critical, may assign more significance to
SWAN input. The fact that observations contribute
less than other inputs means that the system has the
operational benefit of being quite robust to missing
observational data.
The results show that the ANN system is also
robust to a time shift of the prediction period

starting hour, considering the negligibility of the
differences between the system optimized for time
shifts and the regular system. This means there is
no need to train the system for each time shift to
run it hourly.
Our experience with the reimplementation of the
system for the Ashkelon wave station suggests that
having a statistically representative observation data­
set is a prerequisite for training similar systems. The
configuration presented in this paper has been created
in a trial and error process, and future studies and
implementations of the system may automate the con­
figuration process or explore different network config­
urations such as LSTM.
Acknowledgments
The authors warmly acknowledge the team of the IOLR
Physical Oceanography Department that maintains perma­
nent wave observations at IOLR stations. Wind data used in
this work was provided by the group of atmosphere model­
ing headed by Prof. Kallos of the University of Athens. This
was done in the framework of international collaboration in
the Mediterranean Operational Network for the Global
Ocean Observing System (MONGOOS).
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for all of their
constructive and insightful comments in relation to this work.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This research was supported by the Ministry of Innovation,
Science & Technology, Israel & The Federal Ministry of
Education and Research [BMBF], Germany. [MOST, project
number 3-15218; BMBF, project number 03F0823A].
ORCID
Elad Dakar http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4671-4418
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