A novel approach for displacement interval forecasting of landslides with step-like displacement pattern

Quantifying the uncertainties in the prediction of landslide displacement is important for making reliable predictions and for managing landslide risk. This study develops a novel approach for the interval prediction (i.e. uncertainty) of landslide with step-like displacement pattern in the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) area using Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN), Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique and Edited Nearest Neighbor (SMOTEENN) based Random Forest (RF) and bootstrap-Multilayer Perceptron (MLPs). DBSCAN was employed to carry out clustering analysis for different deformation states of the landslide with step-like displacement pattern. The SMOTEENN based RF classifier was trained to deal with imbalanced classification problems. A dynamic switching prediction scheme to construct high-quality Prediction Intervals (PIs) using bootstrap-MLPs was established. The concepts of Pareto front and Knee point were adopted to select the PIs that could provide the best compromise between reliability and accuracy. The proposed DBSCAN-RF-bootstrap-MLP method is illustrated and verified with one typical landslide with step-like displacement pattern, the Bazimen landslide from the TGR area in China. The method showed to perform well and provides the uncertainties associated with landslide displacement prediction for decision making.