Development of empirical formula for imbalanced transverse dispersion coefficient data set using SMOTE

In this study, a new empirical formula for 2D transverse dispersion coefficient was developed using the results of previous tracer test studies, and the performance of the formula was evaluated. Since many tracer test studies have been conducted under the conditions where the width-to-depth ratio is less than 50, the existing empirical formulas developed using these imbalanced tracer test results have limitations in applying to rivers with a width-to-depth ratio greater than 50. Therefore, in order to develop an empirical formula for transverse dispersion coefficient using the imbalanced tracer test data, the Synthetic Minority Oversampling TEchnique (SMOTE) was used to oversample new data representing the properties of the existing tracer test data. The hydraulic data and the transverse dispersion coefficients in conditions of width-to-depth ratio greater than 50 were oversampled using the SMOTE. The reliability of the oversampled data was evaluated using the ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curve. The empirical formula of transverse dispersion coefficient was developed including the oversampled data, and the performance of the results were compared with the empirical formulas suggested in previous studies using R². From the comparison results, the value of R² was 0.81 for the range of W/H < 50 and 0.92 for 50 < W/H, which were improved accuracy compared to the previous studies.