Geoinformation-based landslide susceptibility mapping in subtropical area

Mapping susceptibility of landslide disaster is essential in subtropical area, where abundant rainfall may trigger landslide and mudflow, causing damages to human society. The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated methodology to achieve such a mapping work with improved prediction results using hybrid modeling taking Chongren, Jiangxi as an example. The methodology is composed of the optimal discretization of the continuous geo-environmental factors based on entropy, weight of evidence (WoE) calculation and application of the known machine learning (ML) models, e.g., Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Logistic Regression (LR). The results show the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid modeling for landslide hazard mapping in which the prediction accuracy vs the validation set reach 82.35–91.02% with an AUC [area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve] of 0.912–0.970. The RF algorithm performs best among the observed three ML algorithms and WoE-based RF modeling will be recommended for the similar landslide risk prediction elsewhere. We believe that our research can provide an operational reference for predicting the landslide hazard in the subtropical area and serve for disaster reduction and prevention action of the local governments.