Using hybrid artificial intelligence approach based on a neuro-fuzzy system and evolutionary algorithms for modeling landslide susceptibility in East Azerbaijan Province, Iran

Landslide susceptibility analysis is beneficial information for a wide range of applications, including land use management plans. The present attempt has shed light on an efficient landslide susceptibility mapping framework that involves an adaptive neural-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), which incorporates three metaheuristic methods including grey wolf optimization (GWO), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) in the East Azerbaijan of Iran. To achieve this goal, 10 landslide occurrence-related influencing factors were pondered. A sum of 766 locations with landslide potentiality was recognized in the context of the study, and the Pearson correlation technique utilized in order to select the influencing factors in landslide models. The association between landslides and conditioning factors was also evaluated using a probability certainty factor (PCF) model. In the next phase, three data mining techniques were united with the ANFIS model, comprising ANFIS-grey wolf algorithm (ANFIS-GW), ANFIS-particle swarm optimization (ANFIS-PSO), and ANFIS-shuffled frog leaping algorithm (ANFIS-SFLA), were structured by the training dataset. Lastly, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and statistical procedures were utilized with the aim of validating and contrasting the predictive capability of the models. The findings of the study in terms of the Pearson correlation technique method for the importance ranking of conditioning factors in the context area uncovered that slope, aspect, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and elevation have the highest impact on the occurrence of the landslide. All in all, the ANFIS-PSO model had high performance on both the training (RMSE = 0.288, MAE = 0.069, AUC = 0.89) and validation dataset (RMSE = 0.309, MAE = 0.097, AUC = 0.89), after which, the ANFIS-GWO model and the ANFIS-SFLA model demonstrated the second and third rates. Besides, the study revealed that benefiting the optimization algorithm with the proper selection of the techniques could facilitate landslide susceptibility modeling.