Landslide susceptibility modelling using integrated evidential belief function based logistic regression method: A study from Southern Western Ghats, India

The present study aims to develop a spatially integrated evidential belief function based logistic regression model (EBF-LR) for landslide susceptibility mapping in a naturally sloping terrain of Southern Western Ghats in Kerala, India. For this, a landslide inventory map of 83 previous landslides was prepared using satellite imageries and verified in field check. Thereafter the landslide inventory was randomly divided into 70%-30% basis for model training and testing. Twelve landslide conditioning factors viz., lithology, land use/land cover, NDVI, slope angle, slope aspect, profile curvature, distance to stream, distance to roads, distance to lineaments, soil texture, topographic wetness index and average annual rainfall were considered for landslide susceptibility modelling. The resultant susceptibility maps were validated using receiver operating characteristics curve (ROC) with area under the curve (AUC) value, sensitivity, specificity, kappa index, mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE). Analysis shows that the integrated EBF-LR model outweigh other conventional bivariate and multivariate approaches with a ROC-AUC value of 0.935, Kappa score 0.719, sensitivity 0.885, specificity 0.833 and least RMSE of 0.456 in the validation stage. The study also reveals that anthropogenic disturbances have a significant role on landslide initiation in the study area. Considering the ROC- AUC, MAE, RMSE and other validation measures, the accuracy of the proposed landslide susceptibility model is satisfactory and can be used for future land use planning and landslide mitigation in the study area.