Landslide susceptibility mapping using maximum entropy and support vector machine models along the highway corridor, Garhwal Himalaya

Abstract

The main objective of this study to produce landslide susceptibility zones using maximum entropy (MaxEnt) and support vector machine (SVM) data-driven models along the Tipari to Ghuttu highway corridors in the Garhwal Himalaya. A landslide inventory has been prepared through field surveys and LISS-IV and Landsat 8 satellite images. The datasets of 85 landslides were categorised into training and test sets. In this study 11 landslide conditioning variables were used that are; altitude, slope angle, aspect, plan curvature, topographic wetness index, normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), land use, soil texture, distance to rivers, distance to faults, and distance to the road. The result produced using MaxEnt and SVM model were subsequently validated using receiver operating characteristics curve (ROC) with test sets of landslide dataset. Both the models have good prediction capabilities. MaxEnt has ROC value of 0.78 while SVM has the highest prediction rate of 0.85.