Combining Evolutionary Algorithms and Machine Learning Models in Landslide Susceptibility Assessments

The main objective of the present study is to introduce a novel predictive model that combines evolutionary algorithms and machine learning (ML) models, so as to construct a landslide susceptibility map. Genetic algorithms (GA) are used as a feature selection method, whereas the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is used to optimize the structural parameters of two ML models, support vector machines (SVM) and artificial neural network (ANN). A well-defined spatial database, which included 335 landslides and twelve landslide-related variables (elevation, slope angle, slope aspect, curvature, plan curvature, profile curvature, topographic wetness index, stream power index, distance to faults, distance to river, lithology, and hydrological cover) are considered for the analysis, in the Achaia Regional Unit located in Northern Peloponnese, Greece. The outcome of the study illustrates that both ML models have an excellent performance, with the SVM model achieving the highest learning accuracy (0.977 area under the receiver operating characteristic curve value (AUC)), followed by the ANN model (0.969). However, the ANN model shows the highest prediction accuracy (0.800 AUC), followed by the SVM (0.750 AUC) model. Overall, the proposed ML models highlights the necessity of feature selection and tuning procedures via evolutionary optimization algorithms and that such approaches could be successfully used for landslide susceptibility mapping as an alternative investigation tool.