An Integrated Approach of Machine Learning, Remote Sensing, and GIS Data for the Landslide Susceptibility Mapping

Landslides triggered in mountainous areas can have catastrophic consequences, threaten human life, and cause billions of dollars in economic losses. Hence, it is imperative to map the areas susceptible to landslides to minimize their risk. Around Abbottabad, a large city in northern Pakistan, a large number of landslides can be found. This study aimed to map the landslide susceptibility over these regions in Pakistan by using three Machine Learning (ML) techniques, specifically Linear Regression (LiR), Logistic Regression (LoR), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Several influencing factors were used to identify the potential landslide areas, including elevation, slope degree, slope aspect, general curvature, plan curvature, profile curvature, landcover classification system, Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), soil, lithology, fault density, topographic roughness index, and road density. The weights of these factors were calculated using ML techniques. The weightage overlay tool is adopted to map the final output. According to three ML models, lithology, NDWI, slope, and LCCS significantly impact landslide occurrence. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) is applied to validate the performance of models, and the results show the AUC value of LiR (88%) is better than SVM (86%) and LoR (85%) models. ML models and final susceptibility map gives good accuracy, which can be reliable for the results. The study's outcome provides baselines for policymakers to propose adequate protection and mitigation measures against the landslides in the region, and any other researcher can adopt this methodology to map the landslide susceptibility in another area having similar characteristics.

Automated summary

This study used machine learning techniques to map the landslide susceptibility in the Abbottabad region of Pakistan. The results showed that lithology, NDWI, slope, and LCCS were the significant factors influencing landslide occurrence. Among the three machine learning models, LiR performed the best.