Neural network-based model for landslide susceptibility and soil longitudinal profile analyses: Two case studies

The purpose of this study was to create an empirical model for assessing the landslide risk potential at Savadkouh Azad University, which is located in the rural surroundings of Savadkouh, about 5 km from the city of Pol-Sefid in northern Iran. The soil longitudinal profile of the city of Babol, located 25 km from the Caspian Sea, also was predicted with an artificial neural network (ANN). A multilayer perceptron neural network model was applied to the landslide area and was used to analyze specific elements in the study area that contributed to previous landsliding events. The ANN models were trained with geo-technical data obtained from an investigation of the study area. The quality of the modeling was improved further by the application of some controlling techniques involved in ANN. The observed >90% overall accuracy produced by the ANN technique in both cases is promising for future studies in landslide susceptibility zonation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.