SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE FOR LANDSLIDE ACTIVITY IDENTIFICATION BASED ON VEGETATION ANOMALIES INDICATOR

Abstract

Landslide activity identification is critical for landslide inventory mapping. A detailed landslide inventory map is highly required for various purposes such as landslide susceptibility, hazard, and risk assessments. This paper proposes a novel approach based on vegetation anomalies indicator (VAI) and applying machine learning method namely support vector machine (SVM) to identify status of natural-terrain landslides. First, high resolution airborne LiDAR data and satellite imagery were used to derive landslide-related VAIs, including tree height irregularities, canopy gap, density of different layer of vegetation, vegetation type, vegetation indices, root strength index (RSI), and distribution of water-loving trees. Then, SVM is utilized with different setting of parameter using grid search optimization. SVM Radial Basis Function (RBF) recorded the best optimal pair value with 0.062 and 0.092 misclassification rate for deep seated and shallow translational landslide, respectively. For landslide activity classification, SVM RBF recorded the best accuracy value for both deep seated and shallow translational landslides with 86.0 and 71.3, respectively. Overall, VAIs have great potential in tackling the landslide activity identification problem especially in tropical vegetated area.