An optimized XGBoost-based machine learning method for predicting wave run-up on a sloping beach

Accurate and computationally efficient prediction of wave run-up is required to mitigate the impacts of inundation and erosion caused by tides, storm surges, and even tsunami waves. The conventional methods for calculating wave run-up involve physical experiments or numerical modeling. Machine learning methods have recently become a part of wave run-up model development due to their robustness in dealing with large and complex data. In this paper, an extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost)-based machine learning method is introduced for predicting wave run-up on a sloping beach. More than 400 laboratory observations of wave run-up were utilized as training datasets to construct the XGBoost model. The hyperparameter tuning through the grid search approach was performed to obtain an optimized XGBoost model. The performance of the XGBoost method is compared to that of three different machine learning approaches: multiple linear regression (MLR), support vector regression (SVR), and random forest (RF). The validation evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other machine learning approaches in predicting the wave run-up with a correlation coefficient (R² ) of 0.98675, a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 6.635%, and a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.03902. Compared to empirical formulas, which are often limited to a fixed range of slopes, the XGBoost model is applicable over a broader range of beach slopes and incident wave amplitudes.•The optimized XGBoost method is a feasible alternative to existing empirical formulas and classical numerical models for predicting wave run-up.•Hyperparameter tuning is performed using the grid search method, resulting in a highly accurate machine-learning model.•Our findings indicate that the XGBoost method is more applicable than empirical formulas and more efficient than numerical models.