MetaTrans-FSTSF: A Transformer-Based Meta-Learning Framework for Few-Shot Time Series Forecasting in Flood Prediction

Time series forecasting, particularly within the Internet of Things (IoT) and hydrological domains, plays a critical role in predicting future events based on historical data, which is essential for strategic decision making. Effective flood forecasting is pivotal for optimal water resource management and for mitigating the adverse impacts of flood events. While deep learning methods have demonstrated exceptional performance in time series prediction through advanced feature extraction and pattern recognition, they encounter significant limitations when applied to scenarios with sparse data, especially in flood forecasting. The scarcity of historical data can severely hinder the generalization capabilities of traditional deep learning models, presenting a notable challenge in practical flood prediction applications. To address this issue, we introduce MetaTrans-FSTSF, a pioneering meta-learning framework that redefines few-shot time series forecasting. By innovatively integrating MAML and Transformer architectures, our framework provides a specialized solution tailored for the unique challenges of flood prediction, including data scarcity and complex temporal patterns. This framework goes beyond standard implementations, delivering significant improvements in predictive accuracy and adaptability. Our approach leverages Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning (MAML) to enable rapid adaptation to new forecasting tasks with minimal historical data. Our inner architecture is a Transformer-based meta-predictor capable of capturing intricate temporal dependencies inherent in flood time series data. Our framework was evaluated using diverse datasets, including a real-world hydrological dataset from a small catchment area in Wuyuan, China, and other benchmark time series datasets. These datasets were preprocessed to align with the meta-learning approach, ensuring their suitability for tasks with limited data availability. Through extensive evaluation, we demonstrate that MetaTrans-FSTSF substantially improves predictive accuracy, achieving a reduction of up to 16%, 19%, and 8% in MAE compared to state-of-the-art methods. This study highlights the efficacy of meta-learning techniques in overcoming the limitations posed by data scarcity and enhancing flood forecasting accuracy where historical data are limited.