Spatial prediction models for shallow landslide hazards: a comparative assessment of the efficacy of support vector machines,artificial neural networks,kernel logistic regression,and logistic model tree

Preparation of landslide susceptibility maps is considered as the first important step in landslide risk assessments, but these maps are accepted as an end product that can be used for land use planning. The main objective of this study is to explore some new state-of-the-art sophisticated machine learning techniques and introduce a framework for training and validation of shallow landslide susceptibility models by using the latest statistical methods. The Son La hydropower basin (Vietnam) was selected as a case study. First, a landslide inventory map was constructed using the historical landslide locations from two national projects in Vietnam. A total of 12 landslide conditioning factors were then constructed from various data sources. Landslide locations were randomly split into a ratio of 70:30 for training and validating the models. To choose the best subset of conditioning factors, predictive ability of the factors were assessed using the Information Gain Ratio with 10-fold cross-validation technique. Factors with null predictive ability were removed to optimize the models. Subsequently, five landslide models were built using support vector machines (SVM), multi-layer perceptron neural networks (MLP Neural Nets), radial basis function neural networks (RBF Neural Nets), kernel logistic regression (KLR), and logistic model trees (LMT). The resulting models were validated and compared using the receive operating characteristic (ROC), Kappa index, and several statistical evaluation measures. Additionally, Friedman and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were applied to confirm significant statistical differences among the five machine learning models employed in this study. Overall, the MLP Neural Nets model has the highest prediction capability (90.2 %), followed by the SVM model (88.7 %) and the KLR model (87.9 %), the RBF Neural Nets model (87.1 %), and the LMT model (86.1 %). Results revealed that both the KLR and the LMT models showed promising methods for shallow landslide susceptibility mapping. The result from this study demonstrates the benefit of selecting the optimal machine learning techniques with proper conditioning selection method in shallow landslide susceptibility mapping.     

GIS-based frequency ratio and index of entropy models for landslide susceptibility assessment in the Caspian forest,northern Iran

This study presents a landslide susceptibility assessment for the Caspian forest using frequency ratio and index of entropy models within geographical information system. First, the landslide locations were identified in the study area from interpretation of aerial photographs and multiple field surveys. 72 cases (70 %) out of 103 detected landslides were randomly selected for modeling, and the remaining 31 (30 %) cases were used for the model validation. The landslide-conditioning factors, including slope degree, slope aspect, altitude, lithology, rainfall, distance to faults, distance to streams, plan curvature, topographic wetness index, stream power index, sediment transport index, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), forest plant community, crown density, and timber volume, were extracted from the spatial database. Using these factors, landslide susceptibility and weights of each factor were analyzed by frequency ratio and index of entropy models. Results showed that the high and very high susceptibility classes cover nearly 50 % of the study area. For verification, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were drawn and the areas under the curve (AUC) calculated. The verification results revealed that the index of entropy model (AUC = 75.59 %) is slightly better in prediction than frequency ratio model (AUC = 72.68 %). The interpretation of the susceptibility map indicated that NDVI, altitude, and rainfall play major roles in landslide occurrence and distribution in the study area. The landslide susceptibility maps produced from this study could assist planners and engineers for reorganizing and planning of future road construction and timber harvesting operations.     

Landslide hazard mapping in the Constantine city,Northeast Algeria using frequency ratio,weighting factor,logistic regression,weights of evidence,and analytical hierarchy process methods

Landslides constitute the most widespread and damaging natural hazards in the Constantine city. They represent a significant constraint to development and urban planning. In order to reduce the risk related to potential landslide, there is a need to develop a comprehensive landslide hazard map (LHM) of the area for an efficient disaster management and for planning development activities. The purpose of this research is to prepare and compare the LHMs of the Constantine city, by applying frequency ratio (FR), weighting factor (Wf), logistic regression (LR), weights of evidence (WOE), and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methods used in a framework of the geographical information system (GIS). Firstly, a landslide inventory map has been prepared based on the interpretation of aerial photographs, high resolution satellite images, fieldwork, and available literature. Secondly, eight landslide-conditioning factors such as lithology, slope, exposure, rainfall, land use, distance to drainage, distance to road, and distance to fault have been considered to establish LHMs using the FR, Wf, LR, WOE, and AHP models in GIS. For verification, the obtained LHMs have been validated comparing the LHMs with the known landslide locations using the receiver operating characteristics curves (ROC). The validated results indicate that the FR method provides more accurate prediction (86.59 %) of LHMs than the WOE (82.38 %), AHP (77.86 %), Wf (77.58 %), and LR (70.45 %) models. On the other hand, the obtained results showed that all the used models in this study provided a good accuracy in predicting landslide hazard in Constantine city. The established maps can be used as useful tools for risk prevention and land use planning in the Constantine region.     

Landslide susceptibility mapping by binary logistic regression, analytical hierarchy process, and statistical index models and assessment of their performances

The current research presents a detailed landslide susceptibility mapping study by binary logistic regression, analytical hierarchy process, and statistical index models and an assessment of their performances. The study area covers the north of Tehran metropolitan, Iran. When conducting the study, in the first stage, a landslide inventory map with a total of 528 landslide locations was compiled from various sources such as aerial photographs, satellite images, and field surveys. Then, the landslide inventory was randomly split into a testing dataset 70 % (370 landslide locations) for training the models, and the remaining 30 % (158 landslides locations) was used for validation purpose. Twelve landslide conditioning factors such as slope degree, slope aspect, altitude, plan curvature, normalized difference vegetation index, land use, lithology, distance from rivers, distance from roads, distance from faults, stream power index, and slope-length were considered during the present study. Subsequently, landslide susceptibility maps were produced using binary logistic regression (BLR), analytical hierarchy process (AHP), and statistical index (SI) models in ArcGIS. The validation dataset, which was not used in the modeling process, was considered to validate the landslide susceptibility maps using the receiver operating characteristic curves and frequency ratio plot. The validation results showed that the area under the curve (AUC) for three mentioned models vary from 0.7570 to 0.8520 $ ({\text{AUC}}_{\text{AHP}} = 75.70\;\% ,\;{\text{AUC}}_{\text{SI}} = 80.37\;\% ,\;{\text{and}}\;{\text{AUC}}_{\text{BLR}} = 85.20\;\% ) $ ( AUC AHP = 75.70 % , AUC SI = 80.37 % , and AUC BLR = 85.20 % ) . Also, plot of the frequency ratio for the four landslide susceptibility classes of the three landslide susceptibility models was validated our results. Hence, it is concluded that the binary logistic regression model employed in this study showed reasonably good accuracy in predicting the landslide susceptibility of study area. Meanwhile, the results obtained in this study also showed that the statistical index model can be used as a simple tool in the assessment of landslide susceptibility when a sufficient number of data are obtained.     

A comparative study on the landslide susceptibility mapping using logistic regression and statistical index models

The logistic regression and statistical index models are applied and verified for landslide susceptibility mapping in Daguan County, Yunnan Province, China, by means of the geographic information system (GIS). A detailed landslide inventory map was prepared by literatures, aerial photographs, and supported by field works. Fifteen landslide-conditioning factors were considered: slope angle, slope aspect, curvature, plan curvature, profile curvature, altitude, STI, SPI, and TWI were derived from digital elevation model; NDVI was extracted from Landsat ETM7; rainfall was obtained from local rainfall data; distance to faults, distance to roads, and distance to rivers were created from a 1:25,000 scale topographic map; the lithology was extracted from geological map. Using these factors, the landslide susceptibility maps were prepared by LR and SI models. The accuracy of the results was verified by using existing landslide locations. The statistical index model had a predictive rate of 81.02%, which is more accurate prediction in comparison with logistic regression model (80.29%). The models can be used to land-use planning in the study area.     

Landslide susceptibility mapping using rough sets and back-propagation neural networks in the Three Gorges, China

In the Three Gorges of China, there are frequent landslides, and the potential risk of landslides is tremendous. An efficient and accurate method of generating landslide susceptibility maps is very important to mitigate the loss of lives and properties caused by these landslides. This paper presents landslide susceptibility mapping on the Zigui-Badong of the Three Gorges, using rough sets and back-propagation neural networks (BPNNs). Landslide locations were obtained from a landslide inventory map, supported by field surveys. Twenty-two landslide-related factors were extracted from the 1:10,000-scale topographic maps, 1:50,000-scale geological maps, Landsat ETM + satellite images with a spatial resolution of 28.5 m, and HJ-A satellite images with a spatial resolution of 30 m. Twelve key environmental factors were selected as independent variables using the rough set and correlation coefficient analysis, including elevation, slope, profile curvature, catchment aspect, catchment height, distance from drainage, engineering rock group, distance from faults, slope structure, land cover, topographic wetness index, and normalized difference vegetation index. The initial, three-layered, and four-layered BPNN were trained and then used to map landslide susceptibility, respectively. To evaluate the models, the susceptibility maps were validated by comparing with the existing landslide locations according to the area under the curve. The four-layered BPNN outperforms the other two models with the best accuracy of 91.53 %. Approximately 91.37 % of landslides were classified as high and very high landslide-prone areas. The validation results show sufficient agreement between the obtained susceptibility maps and the existing landslide locations.     

Landslide susceptibility mapping using a modified decision tree classifier in the Xanthi Perfection,Greece

The objective of this study was to validate the outcomes of a modified decision tree classifier by comparing the produced landslide susceptibility map and the actual landslide occurrence, in an area of intensive landslide manifestation, in Xanthi Perfection, Greece. The values that concerned eight landslide conditioning factors for 163 landslides and 163 non-landslide locations were extracted by using advanced spatial GIS functions. Lithological units, elevation, slope angle, slope aspect, distance from tectonic features, distance from hydrographic network, distance from geological boundaries and distance from road network were among the eight landslide conditioning factors that were included in the landslide database used in the training phase. In the present study, landslide and non-landslide locations were randomly divided into two subsets: 80 % of the data (260 instances) were used for training and 20 % of the data (66 instances) for validating the developed classifier. The outcome of the decision tree classifier was a set of rules that expressed the relationship between landslide conditioning factors and the actual landslide occurrence. The landslide susceptibility belief values were obtained by applying a statistical method, the certainty factor method, and by measuring the belief in each rule that the decision tree classifier produced, transforming the discrete type of result into a continuous value that enabled the generation of a landslide susceptibility belief map. In total, four landslide susceptibility maps were produced using the certainty factor method, the Iterative Dichotomizer version 3 algorithm, the J48 algorithm and the modified Iterative Dichotomizer version 3 model in order to evaluate the performance of the developed classifier. The validation results showed that area under the ROC curves for the models varied from 0.7936 to 0.8397 for success rate curve and 0.7766 to 0.8035 for prediction rate curves, respectively. The success rate and prediction curves showed that the modified Iterative Dichotomizer version 3 model had a slightly higher performance with 0.8397 and 0.8035, respectively. From the outcomes of the study, it was induced that the developed modified decision tree classifier could be efficiently used for landslide susceptibility analysis and in general might be used for classification and estimation purposes in spatial predictive models.     

A Comparative Study of Least Square Support Vector Machines and Multiclass Alternating Decision Trees for Spatial Prediction of Rainfall-Induced Landslides in a Tropical Cyclones Area

The objective of this study is to explore and compare the least square support vector machine (LSSVM) and multiclass alternating decision tree (MADT) techniques for the spatial prediction of landslides. The Luc Yen district in Yen Bai province (Vietnam) has been selected as a case study. LSSVM and MADT are effective machine learning techniques of classification applied in other fields but not in the field of landslide hazard assessment. For this, Landslide inventory map was first constructed with 95 landslide locations identified from aerial photos and verified from field investigations. These landslide locations were then divided randomly into two parts for training (70 % locations) and validation (30 % locations) processes. Secondly, landslide affecting factors such as slope, aspect, elevation, curvature, lithology, land use, distance to roads, distance to faults, distance to rivers, and rainfall were selected and applied for landslide susceptibility assessment. Subsequently, the LSSVM and MADT models were built to assess the landslide susceptibility in the study area using training dataset. Finally, receiver operating characteristic curve and statistical index-based evaluations techniques were employed to validate the predictive capability of these models. As a result, both the LSSVM and MADT models have high performance for spatial prediction of landslides in the study area. Out of these, the MADT model (AUC = 0.853) outperforms the LSSVM model (AUC = 0.803). From the landslide study of Luc Yen district in Yen Bai province (Vietnam), it can be conclude that the LSSVM and MADT models can be applied in other areas of world also for and spatial prediction. Landslide susceptibility maps obtained from this study may be helpful in planning, decision making for natural hazard management of the areas susceptible to landslide hazards.     

Landslide susceptibility mapping at Vaz Watershed (Iran) using an artificial neural network model: a comparison between multilayer perceptron (MLP) and radial basic function (RBF) algorithms

Landslide susceptibility and hazard assessments are the most important steps in landslide risk mapping. The main objective of this study was to investigate and compare the results of two artificial neural network (ANN) algorithms, i.e., multilayer perceptron (MLP) and radial basic function (RBF) for spatial prediction of landslide susceptibility in Vaz Watershed, Iran. At first, landslide locations were identified by aerial photographs and field surveys, and a total of 136 landside locations were constructed from various sources. Then the landslide inventory map was randomly split into a training dataset 70 % (95 landslide locations) for training the ANN model and the remaining 30 % (41 landslides locations) was used for validation purpose. Nine landslide conditioning factors such as slope, slope aspect, altitude, land use, lithology, distance from rivers, distance from roads, distance from faults, and rainfall were constructed in geographical information system. In this study, both MLP and RBF algorithms were used in artificial neural network model. The results showed that MLP with Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno learning algorithm is more efficient than RBF in landslide susceptibility mapping for the study area. Finally the landslide susceptibility maps were validated using the validation data (i.e., 30 % landslide location data that was not used during the model construction) using area under the curve (AUC) method. The success rate curve showed that the area under the curve for RBF and MLP was 0.9085 (90.85 %) and 0.9193 (91.93 %) accuracy, respectively. Similarly, the validation result showed that the area under the curve for MLP and RBF models were 0.881 (88.1 %) and 0.8724 (87.24 %), respectively. The results of this study showed that landslide susceptibility mapping in the Vaz Watershed of Iran using the ANN approach is viable and can be used for land use planning.     

Application of frequency ratio,statistical index,and weights-of-evidence models and their comparison in landslide susceptibility mapping in Central Nepal Himalaya

The Mugling–Narayanghat road section falls within the Lesser Himalaya and Siwalik zones of Central Nepal Himalaya and is highly deformed by the presence of numerous faults and folds. Over the years, this road section and its surrounding area have experienced repeated landslide activities. For that reason, landslide susceptibility zonation is essential for roadside slope disaster management and for planning further development activities. The main goal of this study was to investigate the application of the frequency ratio (FR), statistical index (SI), and weights-of-evidence (WoE) approaches for landslide susceptibility mapping of this road section and its surrounding area. For this purpose, the input layers of the landslide conditioning factors were prepared in the first stage. A landslide inventory map was prepared using earlier reports, aerial photographs interpretation, and multiple field surveys. A total of 438 landslide locations were detected. Out these, 295 (67 %) landslides were randomly selected as training data for the modeling using FR, SI, and WoE models and the remaining 143 (33 %) were used for the validation purposes. The landslide conditioning factors considered for the study area are slope gradient, slope aspect, plan curvature, altitude, stream power index, topographic wetness index, lithology, land use, distance from faults, distance from rivers, and distance from highway. The results were validated using area under the curve (AUC) analysis. From the analysis, it is seen that the FR model with a success rate of 76.8 % and predictive accuracy of 75.4 % performs better than WoE (success rate, 75.6 %; predictive accuracy, 74.9 %) and SI (success rate, 75.5 %; predictive accuracy, 74.6 %) models. Overall, all the models showed almost similar results. The resultant susceptibility maps can be useful for general land use planning.     

GIS-based landslide susceptibility mapping with probabilistic likelihood ratio and spatial multi-criteria evaluation models (North of Tehran,Iran)

The aim of this study is to produce landslide susceptibility mapping by probabilistic likelihood ratio (PLR) and spatial multi-criteria evaluation (SMCE) models based on geographic information system (GIS) in the north of Tehran metropolitan, Iran. The landslide locations in the study area were identified by interpretation of aerial photographs, satellite images, and field surveys. In order to generate the necessary factors for the SMCE approach, remote sensing and GIS integrated techniques were applied in the study area. Conditioning factors such as slope degree, slope aspect, altitude, plan curvature, profile curvature, surface area ratio, topographic position index, topographic wetness index, stream power index, slope length, lithology, land use, normalized difference vegetation index, distance from faults, distance from rivers, distance from roads, and drainage density are used for landslide susceptibility mapping. Of 528 landslide locations, 70 % were used in landslide susceptibility mapping, and the remaining 30 % were used for validation of the maps. Using the above conditioning factors, landslide susceptibility was calculated using SMCE and PLR models, and the results were plotted in ILWIS-GIS. Finally, the two landslide susceptibility maps were validated using receiver operating characteristic curves and seed cell area index methods. The validation results showed that area under the curve for SMCE and PLR models is 76.16 and 80.98 %, respectively. The results obtained in this study also showed that the probabilistic likelihood ratio model performed slightly better than the spatial multi-criteria evaluation. These landslide susceptibility maps can be used for preliminary land use planning and hazard mitigation purpose.     

Landslide susceptibility mapping at Zonouz Plain,Iran using genetic programming and comparison with frequency ratio,logistic regression,and artificial neural network models

Without a doubt, landslide is one of the most disastrous natural hazards and landslide susceptibility maps (LSMs) in regional scale are the useful guide to future development planning. Therefore, the importance of generating LSMs through different methods is popular in the international literature. The goal of this study was to evaluate the susceptibility of the occurrence of landslides in Zonouz Plain, located in North-West of Iran. For this purpose, a landslide inventory map was constructed using field survey, air photo/satellite image interpretation, and literature search for historical landslide records. Then, seven landslide-conditioning factors such as lithology, slope, aspect, elevation, land cover, distance to stream, and distance to road were utilized for generation LSMs by various models: frequency ratio (FR), logistic regression (LR), artificial neural network (ANN), and genetic programming (GP) methods in geographic information system (GIS). Finally, total four LSMs were obtained by using these four methods. For verification, the results of LSM analyses were confirmed using the landslide inventory map containing 190 active landslide zones. The validation process showed that the prediction accuracy of LSMs, produced by the FR, LR, ANN, and GP, was 87.57, 89.42, 92.37, and 93.27 %, respectively. The obtained results indicated that the use of GP for generating LSMs provides more accurate prediction in comparison with FR, LR, and ANN. Furthermore; GP model is superior to the ANN model because it can present an explicit formulation instead of weights and biases matrices.     

Landslide susceptibility zonation using GIS and evidential belief function model

The main goal of this paper is to generate a landslide susceptibility map through evidential belief function (EBF) model by using Geographic Information System (GIS) for Qianyang County, Shaanxi Province, China. At first, a detailed landslide inventory map was prepared, and the following ten landslide-conditioning factors were collected: slope angle, slope aspect, curvature, plan curvature, profile curvature, altitude, distance to rivers, geomorphology, lithology, and rainfall. The landslides were detected from the interpretation of aerial photographs and supported by field surveys. A total of 81 landslides were randomly split into the following two parts: the training dataset 70 % (56 landslides) were used for establishing the model and the remaining 30 % (25 landslides) were used for the model validation. The ArcGIS was used to analyze landslide-conditioning factors and evaluate landslide susceptibility; as a result, a landslide susceptibility map was generated by using EBF and ArcGIS 10.0, thus divided into the following five susceptibility classes: very low, low, moderate, high, and very high. Finally, when we validated the accuracy of the landslide susceptibility map, both the success-rate and prediction-rate curve methods were applied. The results reveal that a final susceptibility map has the success rate of 83.31 % and the prediction rate of 79.41 %.     

Combining landslide susceptibility maps obtained from frequency ratio,logistic regression,and artificial neural network models using ASTER images and GIS

Landslide-related factors were extracted from Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) images, and integrated techniques were developed, applied, and verified for the analysis of landslide susceptibility in Boun, Korea, using a geographic information system (GIS). Digital elevation model (DEM), lineament, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and land-cover factors were extracted from the ASTER images for analysis. Slope, aspect, and curvature were calculated from a DEM topographic database. Using the constructed spatial database, the relationships between the detected landslide locations and six related factors were identified and quantified using frequency ratio (FR), logistic regression (LR), and artificial neural network (ANN) models. These relationships were used as factor ratings in an overlay analysis to create landslide susceptibility indices and maps. Three landslide susceptibility maps were then combined and applied as new input factors in the FR, LR, and ANN models to make improved susceptibility maps. All of the susceptibility maps were verified by comparison with known landslide locations not used for training the models. The combined landslide susceptibility maps created using three landslide-related input factors showed improved accuracy (87.00% in FR, 88.21% in LR, and 86.51% in ANN models) compared to the individual landslide susceptibility maps (84.34% in FR, 85.40% in LR, and 74.29% in ANN models) generated using the six factors from the ASTER images.     

Landslide susceptibility mapping using machine learning algorithms and comparison of their performance at Abha Basin,Asir Region,Saudi Arabia

The current study aimed at evaluating the capabilities of seven advanced machine learning techniques(MLTs),including,Support Vector Machine(SVM),Random Forest(RF),Multivariate Adaptive Regression Spline(MARS),Artificial Neural Network(ANN),Quadratic Discriminant Analysis(QDA),Linear Discriminant Analysis(LDA),and Naive Bayes(NB),for landslide susceptibility modeling and comparison of their performances.Coupling machine learning algorithms with spatial data types for landslide susceptibility mapping is a vitally important issue.This study was carried out using GIS and R open source software at Abha Basin,Asir Region,Saudi Arabia.First,a total of 243 landslide locations were identified at Abha Basin to prepare the landslide inventory map using different data sources.All the landslide areas were randomly separated into two groups with a ratio of 70%for training and 30%for validating purposes.Twelve landslide-variables were generated for landslide susceptibility modeling,which include altitude,lithology,distance to faults,normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI),landuse/landcover(LULC),distance to roads,slope angle,distance to streams,profile curvature,plan curvature,slope length(LS),and slope-aspect.The area under curve(AUC-ROC)approach has been applied to evaluate,validate,and compare the MLTs performance.The results indicated that AUC values for seven MLTs range from 89.0%for QDA to 95.1%for RF.Our findings showed that the RF(AUC=95.1%)and LDA(AUC=941.7%)have produced the best performances in comparison to other MLTs.The outcome of this study and the landslide susceptibility maps would be useful for environmental protection.     

Landslide susceptibility assessment using object mapping units,decision tree,and support vector machine models in the Three Gorges of China

Due to the particular geographical location and complex geological conditions, the Three Gorges of China suffer from many landslide hazards that often result in tragic loss of life and economic devastation. To reduce the casualty and damages, an effective and accurate method of assessing landslide susceptibility is necessary. Object-based data mining methods were applied to a case study of landslide susceptibility assessment on the Guojiaba Town of the Three Gorges. The study area was partitioned into object mapping units derived from 30 m resolution Landsat TM images using multi-resolution segmentation algorithm based on the landslide factors of engineering rock group, homogeneity, and reservoir water level. Landslide locations were determined by interpretation of Landsat TM images and extensive field surveys. Eleven primary landslide-related factors were extracted from the topographic and geologic maps, and satellite images. Those factors were selected as independent variables using significance testing and correlation coefficient analysis, including slope, profile curvature, engineering rock group, slope structure, distance from faults, land cover, tasseled cap transformation wetness index, reservoir water level, homogeneity, and first and second principal components of the images. Decision tree and support vector machine (SVM) models with the optimal parameters were trained and then used to map landslide susceptibility, respectively. The analytical results were validated by comparing them with known landslides using the success rate and prediction rate curves and classification accuracy. The object-based SVM model has the highest correct rate of 89.36 % and a kappa coefficient of 0.8286 and outperforms the pixel-based SVM, object-based C5.0, and pixel-based SVM models.     

Mapping landslide susceptibility with logistic regression, multiple adaptive regression splines, classification and regression trees, and maximum entropy methods: a comparative study

Four statistical techniques for modelling landslide susceptibility were compared: multiple logistic regression (MLR), multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), classification and regression trees (CART), and maximum entropy (MAXENT). According to the literature, MARS and MAXENT have never been used in landslide susceptibility modelling, and CART has been used only twice. Twenty independent variables were used as predictors, including lithology as a categorical variable. Two sets of random samples were used, for a total of 90 model replicates (with and without lithology, and with different proportions of positive and negative data). The model performance was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) statistic. The main results are (a) the inclusion of lithology improves the model performance; (b) the best AUC values for single models are MLR (0.76), MARS (0.76), CART (0.77), and MAXENT (0.78); (c) a smaller amount of negative data provides better results; (d) the models with the highest prediction capability are obtained with MAXENT and CART; and (e) the combination of different models is a way to evaluate the model reliability. We further discuss some key issues in landslide modelling, including the influence of the various methods that we used, the sample size, and the random replicate procedures.     

RS & GIS-based landslide susceptibility mapping of the Balason River basin,Darjeeling Himalaya,using logistic regression (LR) model

The present study deals with the preparation of a landslide susceptibility map of the Balason River basin, Darjeeling Himalaya, using a logistic regression model based on Geographic Information System and Remote Sensing. The landslide inventory map was prepared with a total of 295 landslide locations extracted from various satellite images and intensive field survey. Topographical maps, satellite images, geological, geomorphological, soil, rainfall and seismic data were collected, processed and constructed into a spatial database in a GIS environment. The chosen landslide-conditioning factors were altitude, slope aspect, slope angle, slope curvature, geology, geomorphology, soil, land use/land cover, normalised differential vegetation index, drainage density, lineament number density, distance from lineament, distance to drainage, stream power index, topographic wetted index, rainfall and peak ground acceleration. The produced landslide susceptibility map satisfied the decision rules and ?2 Log likelihood, Cox &; Snell R-Square and Nagelkerke R-Square values proved that all the independent variables were statistically significant. The receiver operating characteristic curve showed that the prediction accuracy of the landslide probability map was 96.10%. The proposed LR method can be used in other hazard/disaster studies and decision-making.     

Landslide susceptibility assessment by Dempster–Shafer and Index of Entropy models,Sarkhoun basin,Southwestern Iran

Landslides are natural disasters often activated by interaction of different controlling environmental factors, especially in mountainous terrains. In this research, the landslide susceptibility map was developed for the Sarkhoun catchment using Index of Entropy (IoE) and Dempster–Shafer (DS) models. For this purpose, 344 landslides were mapped in GIS environment. 241 (70%) out of the landslides were selected for the modeling and the remaining (30%) were employed for validation of the models. Afterward, 10 landslide conditioning factor layers were prepared including land use, distance to drainage, slope gradient, altitude, lithology, distance to roads, distance to faults, slope aspect, Topography Wetness Index, and Stream Power Index. The relationship between the landslide conditioning factors and landslide inventory maps was determined using the IoE and DS models. In order to verify the models, the results were compared with validation landslide data not employed in training process of the models. Accordingly, Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves were applied, and Area Under the Curve (AUC) was calculated for the obtained susceptibility maps using the success (training data) and prediction (validation data) rate curves. The land use was found to be the most important factor in the study area. The AUC are 0.82, and 0.81 for success rates of the IoE, and DS models, respectively, while the prediction rates are 0.76 and 0.75. Therefore, the results of the IoE model are more accurate than the DS model. Furthermore, a satisfactory agreement is observed between the generated susceptibility maps by the models and true location of the landslides.     

Landslide susceptibility analysis in the Hoa Binh province of Vietnam using statistical index and logistic regression

The purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare the results of applying the statistical index and the logistic regression methods for estimating landslide susceptibility in the Hoa Binh province of Vietnam. In order to do this, first, a landslide inventory map was constructed mainly based on investigated landslide locations from three projects conducted over the last 10 years. In addition, some recent landslide locations were identified from SPOT satellite images, fieldwork, and literature. Secondly, ten influencing factors for landslide occurrence were utilized. The slope gradient map, the slope curvature map, and the slope aspect map were derived from a digital elevation model (DEM) with resolution 20 × 20 m. The DEM was generated from topographic maps at a scale of 1:25,000. The lithology map and the distance to faults map were extracted from Geological and Mineral Resources maps. The soil type and the land use maps were extracted from National Pedology maps and National Land Use Status maps, respectively. Distance to rivers and distance to roads were computed based on river and road networks from topographic maps. In addition, a rainfall map was included in the models. Actual landslide locations were used to verify and to compare the results of landslide susceptibility maps. The accuracy of the results was evaluated by ROC analysis. The area under the curve (AUC) for the statistical index model was 0.946 and for the logistic regression model, 0.950, indicating an almost equal predicting capacity.