Predicting land use effects on flood susceptibility using machine learning and remote sensing in coastal Vietnam

Abstract

Abstract Flood damage is becoming increasingly severe in the context of climate change and changes in land use. Assessing the effects of these changes on floods is important, to help decision-makers and local authorities understand the causes of worsening floods and propose appropriate measures. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of climate and land use change on flood susceptibility in Thua Thien Hue province, Vietnam, using machine learning techniques (support vector machine (SVM) and random forest (RF)) and remote sensing. The machine learning models used a flood inventory including 1,864 flood locations and 11 conditional factors in 2017 and 2021, as the input data. The predictive capacity of the proposed models was assessed using the area under the curve (AUC), the root mean square error (RMSE), and the mean absolute error (MAE). Both proposed models were successful, with AUC values exceeding 0.95 in predicting the effects of climate and land use change on flood susceptibility. The RF model, with AUC = 0.98, outperformed the SVM model (AUC = 0.97). The areas most susceptible to flooding increased between 2017 and 2021 due to increased built-up area.