SPATIAL PREDICTION MODELS FOR LANDSLIDE ACTIVITY MAPPING USING VEGETATION ANOMALIES

Abstract

An area that located in Kundasang which in Ranau district in Sabah, Malaysia that lies along the bank of Kundasang valley was chosen for comparing the reliability of frequency ratio (FR) and weight of evidence (WoE) methods for landslide activity probability mapping by using related vegetation anomalies indicator. The locations of 47 and 189 of active and dormant landslides respectively were identified using 4 raster layers (topographic openness, hillshade, colour composite and high resolution orthophoto). Each landslide activites were randomly divided into two groups as training (70%) and testing (30%) datasets. Tree height irregularities, DVI, NDVI, SAVI, and OSAVI were considered as landslide bio-indicator. The landslide activity probability maps were prepared using the FR and WoE method. The generated maps were validated by calculating the success and prediction rates from area under receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve. The results of WoE method were relatively reliable (AUC > 0.8) for dormant landslide while only about 40% of active landslide have been predicted accurately. Similar trend yielded for FR method where least accuracy for active landslide prediction.