A Machine Learning Based Early Warning Framework for CKDu Risk Prediction Using Water Quality Data
Nipuni Narmada Jayamaha
Department of Information and Communication Technology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka.
Maheesha Dhashantha Silva
*
Department of Information and Communication Technology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
This paper proposes and tests an environmental water-quality screening proof-of-concept based on machine learning and routine physicochemical measurements. Although the framework is described as CKDu risk prediction, it should be interpreted strictly as an environmental proxy water-potability feature-screening tool and not as a clinical patient-modelling system. The study employed an open-source dataset of 3,276 water samples with nine variables: pH, hardness, total dissolved solids, chloramines, sulfate, conductivity, organic carbon, trihalomethanes and turbidity. Missing values were imputed using median values, and feature scaling was applied where required. A stratified 80:20 train-test split was performed using the original class distribution and a random seed of 42. Accuracy, balanced accuracy, macro F1-score, ROC-AUC and confusion-matrix analysis were used to evaluate five supervised machine-learning models. Random Forest achieved the highest test performance, with an accuracy of 0.659, balanced accuracy of 0.641, macro F1-score of 0.636 and ROC-AUC of 0.695. The selected model was embedded in a prototype interface that translates non-potability probabilities into Low, Moderate and High screening bands and provides input validation and user-friendly follow-up messages. The results indicate the technical feasibility of multivariate machine learning for water-potability classification and sample prioritisation. The dataset does not include CKDu patient records, clinical outcomes, patient exposure histories, geographic exposure information or locally collected samples from CKDu-endemic communities. Therefore, the framework should be regarded only as a proof-of-concept environmental water-screening tool, not as a validated CKDu prediction, clinical diagnostic or regulatory decision-making system.
Keywords: CKDu, machine learning, water potability, Random Forest, environmental screening, early warning framework, physicochemical parameters, probability calibration, explainable artificial intelligence, public health informatics