Prediction on water quality of a lake in Chennai, India using machine learning algorithms

The present research work explores different types of machine learning algorithms to estimate the water quality index and the water quality class. The samples were collected from Korattur Lake in Chennai city and tested for its necessary hydro-chemical parameters. The machine learning models such as support vector machine, decision tree, logistic regression, random forest, and naive Bayesian for assessing the water quality with respect to the accuracy and precision of the model. The water quality parameters such as pH, total dissolved salts, turbidity, phosphate, nitrate, iron, chemical oxygen demand, chloride, and sodium are used as a raw dataset. The models are then tested and evaluated to find the best suitable model by comparing and analyzing the accuracy of prediction, the precision rate, and the time taken for execution of all the models. Among all the algorithms employed, the random forest algorithm produces 95% accuracy which is the highest and also consumes the least execution time. From the random forest model, it was found that water quality has 84% of contamination which was attributed to unfit for drinking purpose. Hence, it could be suggested that water quality left disturbed due to anthropogenic activities and improper maintenance.