Landslide susceptibility mapping (LSM) is a useful tool to estimate the probability of landslide occurrence, providing a scientific basis for natural hazards prevention, land use planning, and economic development in landslide-prone areas. To date, a large number of machine learning methods have been applied to LSM, and recently the advanced convolutional neural network (CNN) has been gradually adopted to enhance the prediction accuracy of LSM. The objective of this study is to introduce a CNN-based model in LSM and systematically compare its overall performance with the conventional machine learning models of random forest, logistic regression, and support vector machine. Herein, we selected Zhangzha Town in Sichuan Province, China, and Lantau Island in Hong Kong, China, as the study areas. Each landslide inventory and corresponding predisposing factors were stacked to form spatial datasets for LSM. The receiver operating characteristic analysis, area under the curve (AUC), and several statistical metrics, such as accuracy, root mean square error, Kappa coefficient, sensitivity, and specificity, were used to evaluate the performance of the models. Finally, the trained models were calculated, and the landslide susceptibility zones were mapped. Results suggest that both CNN and conventional machine learning-based models have a satisfactory performance. The CNN-based model exhibits an excellent prediction capability and achieves the highest performance but also significantly reduces the salt-of-pepper effect, which indicates its great potential for application to LSM.

This study proposed a new hybrid model based on the convolutional neural network (CNN) for making effective use of historical datasets and producing a reliable landslide susceptibility map. The proposed model consists of two parts; one is the extraction of landslide spatial information using two-dimensional CNN and pixel windows, and the other is to capture the correlated features among the conditioning factors using one-dimensional convolutional operations. To evaluate the validity of the proposed model, two pure CNN models and the previously used methods of random forest and a support vector machine were selected as the benchmark models. A total of 621 earthquake-triggered landslides in Ludian County, China and 14 conditioning factors derived from the topography, geological, hydrological, geophysical, land use and land cover data were used to generate a geospatial dataset. The conditioning factors were then selected and analyzed by a multicollinearity analysis and the frequency ratio method. Finally, the trained model calculated the landslide probability of each pixel in the study area and produced the resultant susceptibility map. The results indicated that the hybrid model benefitted from the features extraction capability of the CNN and achieved high-performance results in terms of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and statistical indices. Moreover, the proposed model had 6.2% and 3.7% more improvement than the two pure CNN models in terms of the AUC, respectively. Therefore, the proposed model is capable of accurately mapping landslide susceptibility and providing a promising method for hazard mitigation and land use planning. Additionally, it is recommended to be applied to other areas of the world.

This paper using remote sensing technology, extract land use and land cover change (LUCC), topography and geomorphology, vegetation coverage information of Wenchuan city. According to 2007~2008 type of land use change on the current situation and the dynamic changes in Wenchuan LUCC analysis. The results showed that after the earthquake, the forest cover of Wenchuan coverage from 67.59% in 2007 fell to 60.73 percent, dropped 6.86%, forest dynamic degree reached 10.18%; grass coverage from 16.29% in 2007 fell to 12.55%, dropped 3.74%, the dynamic degree reached 23%. The earthquake triggered landslides, avalanches, landslides and other geological hazards. Large tracts of woodland, grassland turned into bare land. Covering an area of 10.63%, dynamic degree is up to 291%, about 434.12km ² , caused serious damage to the ecological environment to Wenchuan city.

Landslide susceptibility mapping (LSM) is a useful tool to estimate the probability of landslide occurrence, providing a scientific basis for natural hazards prevention, land use planning, and economic development in landslide-prone areas. To date, a large number of machine learning methods have been applied to LSM, and recently the advanced Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has been gradually adopted to enhance the prediction accuracy of LSM. The objective of this study is to introduce a CNN based model in LSM and systematically compare its overall performance with the conventional machine learning models of random forest, logistic regression, and support vector machine. Herein, we selected the Jiuzhaigou region in Sichuan Province, China as the study area. A total number of 710 landslides and 12 predisposing factors were stacked to form spatial datasets for LSM. The ROC analysis and several statistical metrics, such as accuracy, root mean square error (RMSE), Kappa coefficient, sensitivity, and specificity were used to evaluate the performance of the models in the training and validation datasets. Finally, the trained models were calculated and the landslide susceptibility zones were mapped. Results suggest that both CNN and conventional machine-learning based models have a satisfactory performance (AUC: 85.72% − 90.17%). The CNN based model exhibits excellent good-of-fit and prediction capability, and achieves the highest performance (AUC: 90.17%) but also significantly reduces the salt-of-pepper effect, which indicates its great potential of application to LSM.