Landslide susceptibility assessment in Western Henan Province based on a comparison of conventional and ensemble machine learning

Landslide is a serious natural disaster next only to earthquake and flood, which will cause a great threat to people’s lives and property safety. The traditional research of landslide disaster based on experience-driven or statistical model and its assessment results are subjective , difficult to quantify, and no pertinence. As a new research method for landslide susceptibility assessment, machine learning can greatly improve the landslide susceptibility model’s accuracy by constructing statistical models. Taking Western Henan for example, the study selected 16 landslide influencing factors such as topography, geological environment, hydrological conditions, and human activities, and 11 landslide factors with the most significant influence on the landslide were selected by the recursive feature elimination (RFE) method. Five machine learning methods [Support Vector Machines (SVM), Logistic Regression (LR), Random Forest (RF), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA)] were used to construct the spatial distribution model of landslide susceptibility. The models were evaluated by the receiver operating characteristic curve and statistical index. After analysis and comparison, the XGBoost model (AUC 0.8759) performed the best and was suitable for dealing with regression problems. The model had a high adaptability to landslide data. According to the landslide susceptibility map of the five models, the overall distribution can be observed. The extremely high and high susceptibility areas are distributed in the Funiu Mountain range in the southwest, the Xiaoshan Mountain range in the west, and the Yellow River Basin in the north. These areas have large terrain fluctuations, complicated geological structural environments and frequent human engineering activities. The extremely high and highly prone areas were 12043.3 km² and 3087.45 km², accounting for 47.61% and 12.20% of the total area of the study area, respectively. Our study reflects the distribution of landslide susceptibility in western Henan Province, which provides a scientific basis for regional disaster warning, prediction, and resource protection. The study has important practical significance for subsequent landslide disaster management.