Accelerating Flood Warnings by 10 Hours: The Power of River Network Topology in AI-enhanced Flood Forecasting

Abstract: Climate change-driven floods demand advanced forecasting models, yet Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) underutilize river network topology due to tree-like structures causing over-squashing from high node resistance distances. This study identifies this limitation and introduces a reachability-based graph transformation to densify topological connections, reducing resistance distances. Empirical tests show transformed-GNNs outperform EA-LSTM in extreme flood prediction, achieving 24-h water level accuracy equivalent to EA-LSTM's 14-h forecasts - a 71% improvement in long-term predictive horizon. The dense graph retains flow dynamics across hierarchical river branches, enabling GNNs to capture distal node interactions critical for rare flood events. This topological innovation bridges the gap between river network structure and GNN modeling, offering a scalable framework for early warning systems.