Genetic algorithm based feature selection for landslide susceptibility mapping in northern Iran

Abstract

Recognizing where landslides are most likely to occur is crucial for land use planning and decision-making especially in the mountainous areas. A significant portion of northern Iran (NI) is prone to landslides due to its climatology, geological and topographical characteristics. The main objective of this study is to produce landslide susceptibility maps in NI applying three machine learning algorithms such as K-nearest neighbors (KNN), Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Random Forest (RF). Out of the total number of 1334 landslides identified in the study area, 894 (≈67%) locations were used for the landslide susceptibility maps, while the remaining 440 (≈33%) cases were utilized for the model validation. 21 landslide triggering factors including topographical, hydrological, lithological and Land cover types were extracted from the spatial database using SAGA (System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses), ArcGIS software and satellite images. Furthermore, a genetic algorithm was employed to select the most important informative features. Then, landslide susceptibility was analyzed by assessing the environmental feasibility of influential factors. The obtained results indicate that the RF model with the overall accuracy (OA) of 90.01% depicted a better performance than SVM (OA Combining double low line 81.06%) and KNN (OA Combining double low line 83.05%) models. The produced susceptibility maps can be productively practical for upcoming land use planning in NI.