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Groundwater spring plays a crucial role in human life, including water resource management and planning; therefore, developing accurate prediction models for groundwater spring potential mapping is essential. The objective of this research is to introduce and confirm a new modeling approach based on TensorFlow Deep Neural Networks (TF-DNN) and multisource geospatial data for spatial prediction of groundwater spring potential, with a case study in the tropical province in the central highland of Vietnam. For this task, the TF-DNN model structure with three hidden layers with 32 neurons each was established; therein, the Adaptive Moment Estimation (ADAM) algorithm was used as an optimizer, whereas the Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) was used as the activation function, and the sigmoid was used as the transfer function. A geospatial database for the study area, consisting of 733 groundwater spring locations and 12 influencing factors, was prepared in ArcGIS Pro. Then, it was used to develop and verify the TF-DNN model. Decision Tree, Support Vector Machine, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Classification and Regression Trees were used as a benchmark for the model comparison. The results demonstrate that the proposed TF-DNN model (Accuracy = 80.5%, F-score = 0.797, and AUC = 0.864) achieves a high global prediction performance, outperforming the benchmark models. Thus, the TF-DNN represents a novel and effective tool for spatially predicting groundwater spring potential mapping. The groundwater spring potential map generated in this study has the potential to assist provincial authorities in formulating strategies concerning water management and socio-economic development.

Floods remain one of the most devastating weather-induced disasters worldwide, resulting in numerous fatalities each year and severely impacting socio-economic development and the environment. Therefore, the ability to predict flood-prone areas in advance is crucial for effective risk management. The objective of this research is to assess and compare three convolutional neural networks, U-Net, WU-Net, and U-Net++, for spatial prediction of pluvial flood with a case study at a tropical area in the north of Vietnam. They are relative new convolution algorithms developed based on U-shaped architectures. For this task, a geospatial database with 796 historical flood locations and 12 flood indicators was prepared. For training the models, the binary cross-entropy was employed as the loss function, while the Adaptive moment estimation (ADAM) algorithm was used for the optimization of the model parameters, whereas, F1-score and classification accuracy (Acc) were used to assess the performance of the models. The results unequivocally highlight the high performance of the three models, achieving an impressive accuracy rate of 96.01%. The flood susceptibility maps derived from this research possess considerable utility for local authorities, providing valuable insights and information to enhance decision-making processes and facilitate the implementation of effective risk management strategies.

Landslides are a significant geological hazard that annually cause extensive damage and loss of life worldwide. Therefore, it is crucial to have reliable prediction models for landslide susceptibility in order to identify high-risk areas and implement proactive measures to prevent or mitigate their impacts. The purpose of this study is to propose and evaluate a novel approach called BCMO-DeepNeuralNets for spatial prediction of the areas most susceptible to landslides. The study focuses on a tropical cyclone area in three districts of central Vietnam, namely Nam Tra My, Bac Tra My, and Phuoc Son. Accordingly, ten input factors were considered: slope, aspect, elevation, relief amplitude, land use, soil type, road distance, geology, fault distance, and rainfall. The proposed BCMO-DeepNeuralNets method leverages the power of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) to develop a deep-learning model capable of inferring landslide susceptibility indices. To optimize this model, the study employs the Balancing Composite Motions Optimization (BCMO) technique. Additionally, Logistic Regression (LR) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) are used as benchmark models to confirm the efficacy of the proposed approach. To evaluate the prediction performance of the models, popular metrics such as mean squared error (MSE), accuracy (Acc), and Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) are employed. The results show that the BCMO-DeepNeuralNets model exhibits high prediction performance, with an MSE of 0.038, Acc of 93.4%, and AUC of 0.971. This model outperforms the benchmark models, LR and SVM. Consequently, BCMO-DeepNeuralNets emerges as a new tool with significant potential for landslide susceptibility mapping. The landslide susceptibility map generated by this research aids in the identification of landslide-prone areas, providing a more accurate understanding of associated risks. As a result, it can be instrumental in policy and decision-making processes, enabling the implementation of appropriate measures to mitigate the impact of landslides in the study area.

The digital elevation model (DEM) and its derived morphometric factors, i.e., slope, aspect, profile and plan curvatures, and topographic wetness index (TWI), are essential for natural hazard modeling and prediction as they provide critical information about the terrain’s characteristics that can influence the likelihood and severity of natural hazards. Therefore, increasing the accuracy of the DEM and its derived factors plays a critical role. The primary aim of this study is to evaluate and compare the effects of resampling and downscaling the DEM from low to medium resolution and from medium to high resolutions using four methods: namely the Hopfield Neural Network (HNN), Bilinear, Bicubic, and Kriging, on five morphometric factors derived from it. A geospatial database was established, comprising five DEMs with different resolutions: specifically, a SRTM DEM with 30 m resolution, a 20 m resolution DEM derived from topographic maps at a scale of 50,000, a 10 m resolution DEM generated from topographic maps at a scale of 10,000, a 5 m resolution DEM created using surveying points with total stations, and a 5 m resolution DEM constructed through drone photogrammetry. The accuracy of the resampling and downscaling was assessed using Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) as statistical metrics. The results indicate that, in the case of downscaling from low to medium resolution, all four methods—HNN, Bilinear, Bicubic, and Kriging—significantly improve the accuracy of slope, aspect, profile and plan curvatures, and TWI. However, for the case of medium to high resolutions, further investigations are needed as the improvement in accuracy observed in the DEMs does not necessarily translate to the improvement of the second derivative morphometric factors such as plan and profile curvatures and TWI. While RMSEs of the first derivatives of DEMs, such as slope and aspect, reduced in a range of 8% to 55% in all five datasets, the RMSEs of curvatures and TWI slightly increased in cases of downscaling and resampling of Dataset 4. Among the four methods, the HNN method provides the highest accuracy, followed by the bicubic method. The statistics showed that in all five cases of the experiment, the HNN downscaling reduced the RMSE and MAE by 55% for the best case and 10% for the worst case for slope, and it reduced the RMSE by 50% for the best case of aspect. Both the HNN and the bicubic methods outperform the Kriging and bilinear methods. Therefore, we highly recommend using the HNN method for downscaling DEMs to produce more accurate morphometric factors, slope, aspect, profile and plan curvatures, and TWI.

Fluvial floods endure as one of the most catastrophic weather-induced disasters worldwide, leading to numerous fatalities each year and significantly impacting socio-economic development and the environment. Hence, the research and development of new methods and algorithms focused on improving fluvial flood prediction and devising robust flood management strategies are essential. This study explores and assesses the potential application of 1D-Convolution Neural Networks (1D-CNN) for spatial prediction of fluvial flood in the Quang Nam province, a high-frequency tropical cyclone area in central Vietnam. To this end, a geospatial database with 4156 fluvial flood locations and 12 flood indicators was considered. The ADAM algorithm and the MSE loss function were used to train the 1D-CNN model, whereas popular performance metrics, such as Accuracy (Acc), Kappa, and AUC, were used to measure the performance. The results indicated remarkable performance by the 1D-CNN model, achieving high prediction accuracy with metrics such as Acc = 90.7%, Kappa = 0.814, and AUC = 0.963. Notably, the proposed 1D-CNN model outperformed benchmark models, including DeepNN, SVM, and LR. This achievement underscores the promise and innovation brought by 1D-CNN in the realm of susceptibility mapping for fluvial floods.

Identifying areas with high groundwater spring potential is crucial as it enables better decision-making concerning water supply, sustainable development, and the protection of sensitive ecosystems; therefore, it is necessary to predict the groundwater spring potential with highly accurate models. This study aims to assess and compare the effectiveness of deep neural networks (DeepNNs) and swarm-optimized random forests (SwarmRFs) in predicting groundwater spring potential. This study focuses on a case study conducted in the Gia Lai province, located in the Central Highland of Vietnam. To accomplish this objective, a comprehensive groundwater database was compiled, comprising 938 groundwater spring locations and 12 influential variables, namely land use and land cover (LULC), geology, distance to fault, distance to river, rainfall, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), normalized difference moisture index (NDMI), normalized difference water index (NDWI), slope, aspect, elevation, and curvature. The DeepNN model was trained and fine-tuned using the Adaptive Moment Estimation (ADAM) optimizer, while the SwarmRF model employed the Harris Hawks Optimizer (HHO) to search for optimal parameters. The results indicate that both the DeepNN model (accuracy = 77.9%, F-score = 0.783, kappa = 0.559, and AUC = 0.820) and the SwarmRF model (accuracy = 80.2%, F-score = 0.798, kappa = 0.605, and AUC = 0.854) exhibit robust predictive capabilities. The SwarmRF model displays a slight advantage over the DeepNN model in terms of performance. Among the 12 influential factors, geology emerges as the most significant determinant of groundwater spring potential. The groundwater spring potential maps generated through this research can offer valuable information for local authorities to facilitate effective water resource management and support sustainable development planning.

Assessment of sewer condition is one of the critical steps in asset management and support investment decisions; therefore, condition assessment models with high accuracy are important that can help utility managers and other authorities correctly assess the current condition of the sewage network and effectively initiate maintenance and rehabilitation strategies. The main objective of this research is to assess the potential application of machine learning (ML) algorithms for predicting the condition of sewer pipes with a case study in Ålesund city, Norway. Nine physical factors (i.e., age, diameter, depth, slope, length, pipe type, material, pipe form, and connection type) and ten environmental factors (i.e., rainfall, geology, landslide area, building area, population, land cover, groundwater, traffic volume, distance to road, and soil type) were used to assess the sewer conditions employing seventeen ML models. After processing the sewer inspections, 1159 of 1449 individual pipelines were used to train the sewer condition model. The performance of ML models was validated using the 290 remaining inspected sewer pipes. The area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (AUC-ROC) curve and accuracy (ACC) showed that the Random Forest (AUC-ROC = 77.6% and ACC = 78.3%) is a sensitive model for predicting the condition of sewer pipes in the study area. Based on the Random Forest model, maps of predicted conditions of sewers were generated that may be useful for utilities and water managers to establish future sewer system maintenance strategies.

Frequent forest fires are causing severe harm to the natural environment, such as decreasing air quality and threatening different species; therefore, developing accurate prediction models for forest fire danger is vital to mitigate these impacts. This research proposes and evaluates a new modeling approach based on TensorFlow deep neural networks (TFDeepNN) and geographic information systems (GIS) for forest fire danger modeling. Herein, TFDeepNN was used to create a forest fire danger model, whereas the adaptive moment estimation (ADAM) optimization algorithm was used to optimize the model, and GIS with Python programming was used to process, classify, and code the input and output. The modeling focused on the tropical forests of the Phu Yen Province (Vietnam), which incorporates 306 historical forest fire locations from 2019 to 2023 and ten forest-fire-driving factors. Random forests (RF), support vector machines (SVM), and logistic regression (LR) were used as a baseline for the model comparison. Different statistical metrics, such as F-score, accuracy, and area under the ROC curve (AUC), were employed to evaluate the models’ predictive performance. According to the results, the TFDeepNN model (with F-score of 0.806, accuracy of 79.3%, and AUC of 0.873) exhibits high predictive performance and surpasses the performance of the three baseline models: RF, SVM, and LR; therefore, TFDeepNN represents a novel tool for spatially predicting forest fire danger. The forest fire danger map from this study can be helpful for policymakers and authorities in Phu Yen Province, aiding sustainable land-use planning and management.

Abstract Extensive studies have highlighted a need for frequently consistent land cover information for interdisciplinary studies. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for the automatic production of the first Vietnam-wide annual land use/land cover (LULC) data sets (VLUCDs) from 1990 to 2020, using available remotely sensed and inventory data. Classification accuracies ranged from 85.7 ± 1.3 to 92.0 ± 1.2% with the primary dominant LULC and 77.6 ± 1.2% to 84.7 ± 1.1% with the secondary dominant LULC. This confirmed the potential of the proposed framework for systematically long-term monitoring LULC in Vietnam. Results reveal that despite slight recoveries in 2000 and 2010, the net loss of forests (19,940 km2) mainly transformed to croplands over 30 years. Meanwhile, productive croplands were converted to urban areas, which increased approximately ten times. A threefold increase in aquaculture was a major driver of the wetland loss (1914 km2). The spatial–temporal changes varied, but the most dynamic regions were the western north, the southern centre, and the south. These findings can provide evidence-based information on formulating and implementing coherent land management policies. The explicitly spatio-temporal VLUCDs can be benchmarks for global LULC validation, and utilized for a variety of applications in the research of environmental changes towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

This paper presents a new hybrid ensemble modeling method called BBO-DE-STreeEns for land-slide susceptibility mapping in Than Uyen district, Vietnam. The method uses subbagging and random subspacing to generate subdatasets for constituent classifiers of the ensemble model, and a split-point and attribute reduced classifier (SPAARC) decision tree algorithm to build each classifier. To optimize hyperparameters of the ensemble model, a hybridization of biogeography-based optimization (BBO) and differential evolution (DE) algorithms is adopted. The land-slide database for the study area includes 114 landslide locations, 114 non-landslide locations, and ten influencing factors: elevation, slope, curvature, aspect, relief amplitude, soil type, geology, distance to faults, distance to roads, and distance to rivers. The database was used to build and verify the BBO-DE-StreeEns model, and standard statistical metrics, namely, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), sensitivity (Sen), specificity (Spe), accuracy (Acc), Fscore, Cohen’s Kappa, and the area under the ROC curve (AUC), were calculated to evaluate prediction power. Logistic regression, multi-layer perceptron neural network, support vector machine, and SPAARC were used as benchmark models. The results show that the proposed model outperforms the benchmarks with a high prediction power (PPV = 90.3%, NPV = 83.8%, Sen = 82.4%, Spe = 91.2%, Acc = 86.8%, Fscore = 0.862, Kappa = 0.735, and AUC = 0.940). Therefore, the BBO-DE-StreeEns method is a promising tool for landslide susceptibility mapping.

The objective of this research is to propose and confirm a new machine learning approach of Best-First tree (BFtree), AdaBoost (AB), MultiBoosting (MB), and Bagging (Bag) ensembles for potential groundwater mapping and assessing role of influencing factors. The Yasuj-Dena area (Iran) is selected as a case study. For this regard, a Yasuj-Dena database was established with 362 springs locations and 12 groundwater-influencing factors (slope, aspect, elevation, stream power index (SPI), length of slope (LS), topographic wetness index (TWI), topographic position index (TPI), land use, lithology, distance from fault, distance from river, and rainfall). The database was employed to train and validate the proposed groundwater models. The area under the curve (AUC) and statistical metrics were employed to check and confirm the quality of the models. The result shows that the BFTree-Bag model (AUC = 0.810, kappa = 0.495) has the highest prediction performance, followed by the BFTree-MB model (AUC = 0.785, kappa = 0.477), and the BFTree-MB model (AUC = 0.745, kappa = 0.422). Compared to the benchmark of Random Forests, the BFTree-Bag model performs better; therefore, we conclude that the BFtree-Bag is a new tool should be used for modeling of groundwater potential.

Abstract Land susceptibility to wind erosion hazard in Isfahan province, Iran, was mapped by testing 16 advanced regression-based machine learning methods: Robust linear regression (RLR), Cforest, Non-convex penalized quantile regression (NCPQR), Neural network with feature extraction (NNFE), Monotone multi-layer perception neural network (MMLPNN), Ridge regression (RR), Boosting generalized linear model (BGLM), Negative binomial generalized linear model (NBGLM), Boosting generalized additive model (BGAM), Spline generalized additive model (SGAM), Spike and slab regression (SSR), Stochastic gradient boosting (SGB), support vector machine (SVM), Relevance vector machine (RVM) and the Cubist and Adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). Thirteen factors controlling wind erosion were mapped, and multicollinearity among these factors was quantified using the tolerance coefficient (TC) and variance inflation factor (VIF). Model performance was assessed by RMSE, MAE, MBE, and a Taylor diagram using both training and validation datasets. The result showed that five models (MMLPNN, SGAM, Cforest, BGAM and SGB) are capable of delivering a high prediction accuracy for land susceptibility to wind erosion hazard. DEM, precipitation, and vegetation (NDVI) are the most critical factors controlling wind erosion in the study area. Overall, regression-based machine learning models are efficient techniques for mapping land susceptibility to wind erosion hazards.

Nonlinear identification of a narrow cantilever blade undergoing free vibration was studied. In the absence of forced excitation and because of general data deficiency of this system, the current identification methods cannot be applied with sufficient accuracy. A new identification approach was introduced in the present study based on nonlinear free vibration decay. Nonlinear free response of the presented system is determined by the coupling of generalized variation iteration and the modified differential transformation methods. The comparisons between the experiments and calculations is highlighted the good accuracy of the identified nonlinear model.

Abstract Floods in urban environments often result in loss of life and destruction of property, with many negative socio-economic effects. However, the application of most flood prediction models still remains challenging due to data scarcity. This creates a need to develop novel hybridized models based on historical urban flood events, using, e.g., metaheuristic optimization algorithms and wavelet analysis. The hybridized models examined in this study (Wavelet-SVR-Bat and Wavelet-SVR-GWO), designed as intelligent systems, consist of a support vector regression (SVR), integrated with a combination of wavelet transform and metaheuristic optimization algorithms, including the grey wolf optimizer (GWO), and the bat optimizer (Bat). The efficiency of the novel hybridized and standalone SVR models for spatial modeling of urban flood inundation was evaluated using different cutoff-dependent and cutoff-independent evaluation criteria, including area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), Accuracy (A), Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC), Misclassification Rate (MR), and F-score. The results demonstrated that both hybridized models had very high performance (Wavelet-SVR-GWO: AUC = 0.981, A = 0.92, MCC = 0.86, MR = 0.07; Wavelet-SVR-Bat: AUC = 0.972, A = 0.88, MCC = 0.76, MR = 0.11) compared with the standalone SVR (AUC = 0.917, A = 0.85, MCC = 0.7, MR = 0.15). Therefore, these hybridized models are a promising, cost-effective method for spatial modeling of urban flood susceptibility and for providing in-depth insights to guide flood preparedness and emergency response services.

This article addresses the spatial analysis of landslide susceptibility in the Ardabil province of Iran. To this end, two well-known optimization algorithms, namely genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are synthesized with an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) to create the ensembles of GA-ANFIS and PSO-ANFIS. Besides, the statistical index (SI) model is also performed to be compared with the mentioned intelligent techniques. Fourteen landslide conditioning factors including elevation, slope aspect, land use, plan curvature, profile curvature, soil type, distance to river, distance to road, distance to fault, rainfall, slope degree, stream power index (SPI), topographic wetness index (TWI), and lithology were considered within the geographic information system (GIS). Out of 253 identified landslides, 177 points (70% of them) were randomly selected and used for the training phase, and the remaining 76 points (30% of them) were used to evaluate the accuracy of the SI, GA-ANFIS, and PSO-ANFIS models. Referring to the calculated area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) index, the GA-ANFIS (AUROC = 0.914) and SI (AUROC = 0.821) showed the best performance, respectively in the training and testing phases. Notably, ANFIS-PSO emerged as the faster prediction method compared to the GA-ANFIS. Also, from spatial analysis, it was revealed that around 95%, 87%, and 97% of the training landslides, and 96%, 84%, and 76% of the testing landslides are located in hazardous areas.

Groundwater salinization is considered as a major environmental problem in worldwide coastal areas, influencing ecosystems and human health. However, an accurate prediction of salinity concentration in groundwater remains a challenge due to the complexity of groundwater salinization processes and its influencing factors. In this study, we evaluate state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) algorithms for predicting groundwater salinity and identify its influencing factors. We conducted a study for the coastal multi-layer aquifers of the Mekong River Delta (Vietnam), using a geodatabase of 216 groundwater samples and 14 conditioning factors. We compared the predictive performances of different ML techniques, i.e., the Random Forest Regression (RFR), the Extreme Gradient Boosting Regression (XGBR), the CatBoost Regression (CBR), and the Light Gradient Boosting Regression (LGBR) models. The model performance was assessed by using root-mean-square error (RMSE), coefficient of determination (R2), the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). The results show that the CBR model has the highest performance with both training (R2 = 0.999, RMSE = 29.90) and testing datasets (R2 = 0.84, RMSE = 205.96, AIC = 720.60, and BIC = 751.04). Ten of the 14 influencing factors, including the distance to saline sources, the depth of screen well, the groundwater level, the vertical hydraulic conductivity, the operation time, the well density, the extraction capacity, the thickness of the aquitard, the distance to fault, and the horizontal hydraulic conductivity are the most important factors for groundwater salinity prediction. The results provide insights for policymakers in proposing remediation and management strategies for groundwater salinity issues in the context of excessive groundwater exploitation in coastal lowland regions. Since the human-induced influencing factors have significantly influenced groundwater salinization, urgent actions should be taken into consideration to ensure sustainable groundwater management in the coastal areas of the Mekong River Delta.

Due to the wide application of evolutionary science in different engineering problems, the main aim of this paper is to present two novel optimizations of multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network, namely dragonfly algorithm (DA) and biogeography-based optimization (BBO) for landslide susceptibility assessment at a study area, West of Iran. Utilizing 14 landslide conditioning factors, namely elevation, slope aspect, plan curvature, profile curvature, soil type, lithology, distance to the river, distance to the road, distance to the fault, land cover, slope degree, stream power index (SPI), and topographic wetness index (TWI) and rainfall as the input variables, and 208 historical landslides as target variable, the required spatial database is created. Then, the MLP is synthesized with the mentioned algorithms to develop the proposed DA-MLP and BBO-MLP ensembles. Three accuracy criteria of mean square error, mean absolute error, and area under the receiving operating characteristic curve are used to evaluate the performance of the models and also to develop a score-based ranking system. As the first outcome, the application of the DA and BBO metaheuristic algorithms enhances the accuracy of the MLP. Moreover, referring to the calculated total ranking scores of 6, 14, and 16, it was revealed that the BBO performs more efficiently than DA in optimizing the MLP.

The objective of this study is to attempt a new soft computing approach for assessment of landslide susceptibility in the Luc Yen district, Yen Bai province (Viet Nam) using a novel classifier ensemble model of Naïve Bayes and Rotation Forest. First, history of 95 landslide locations was identified byfield investigations and interpretation of aerial photos. Also, the total ten landslide causal factors were selected (slope, aspect, elevation, curvature, lithology, land use, distance to roads, distance to rivers, distance to faults, and rainfall) to evaluate the spatial relationship with landslide occurrences. Information Gain technique is carried out to quantify the predictive capability of these factors. Second, landslide susceptibility assessment was carried out utilizing the novel classifier ensemble model. Finally, the performance of landslide model was validated using receiver operating characteristic curve technique, and statistical index-based evaluations. The novel classifier ensemble model indicates high prediction capability (AUC = 0.846) and relatively high accuracy (ACC = 78.77%). The study reveals that this model performs well in comparison to the other landslide models such as AdaBoost, Bagging, MultiBoost, and Random Forest. Overall, the novel classifier ensemble model is a promising method that could be used for landslide susceptibility assessment.

This paper proposes and implements an early warning and monitoring system for rainfall-induced landslide (named as EWMRIL) with a case study at the Nam Dan landslide (northern Vietnam). The proposed system consists of six sensor nodes and one rainfall station that are used to sense large amounts of data in real-time such as soil moisture, pore-water pressure (PWP), movement status, and rainfall. In addition, a new flexible configuration for the wireless communication system is proposed that is capable not only to save the energy consuming but also to ensure the reliability of the system. Using wireless communication system, the sensed data were sent to the computer station for analyzing and predicting the instability of the landslide in terms of factor of safety (FoS) using the finite element seepage analysis and the limit equilibrium slope stability analysis methods. These methods are available in the SEEP/W and SLOPE/W modules of the GeoStudio software. Based on the analyzing results, the system proposed three warning levels for the landslide Early, Intermediate, and Imminent. Experiment result in the rainy season from August to September 2016 has proven the validity of the EWMRIL system. The result of this study is useful for landslide risk prevention and management in landslide prone-areas.

Suichuan is a mountainous area at the Jiangxi province in Central China, where rainfall-induced landslides occur frequently. The purpose of this study is to assess landslide susceptibility of this region using support vector machine (SVM) with four kernel functions: polynomial (PL), radial basis function (RBF), sigmoid (SIG), and linear (LN). A total of 178 landslides were used to accomplish this approach, of which, 125 (70%) landslides were randomly selected for training the landslide susceptibility models, whereas the remaining 53 (30%) were used for the model validation. Fifteen landslide conditioning factors were considered including slope-angle, altitude, slope-aspect, topographic wetness index (TWI), sediment transport index (STI), stream power index (SPI), plan curvature, profile curvature, distance to rivers, distance to faults, distance to roads, precipitation, landuse, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and lithology. Using the training dataset, nine landslide susceptibility models for the Suichuan area were constructed with the four kernel functions. To evaluate the performance of these models, the receiver-operating characteristic curve (ROC) and area under the curve (AUC) were used. Using the training dataset, AUC values for the SVM-PL models with six degrees PL function (1–6) are 0.715, 0.801, 0.856, 0.891, 0.919, 0.953, respectively, and for the SVM-RBF model, the SVM-SIG model, and the SVM-LN model are 0.716, 0.741, and 0.740, respectively. Using the validation dataset, AUC values for the SVM-PL models with six degrees PL function (1–6) are 0.738, 0.730, 0.683, 0.648, 0.608, and 0.598, respectively, and for the SVM-RBF model, the SVM-SIG model, and the SVM-LN model are 0.716, 0.741, and 0.740, respectively. Our results suggested that the SVM-RBF model is the most suitable for landslide susceptibility assessment for the study area.

This study tested the use of machine learning techniques for the estimation of above-ground biomass (AGB) of Sonneratia caseolaris in a coastal area of Hai Phong city, Vietnam. We employed a GIS database and multi-layer perceptron neural networks (MLPNN) to build and verify an AGB model, drawing upon data from a survey of 1508 mangrove trees in 18 sampling plots and ALOS-2 PALSAR imagery. We assessed the model’s performance using root-mean-square error, mean absolute error, coefficient of determination (R2), and leave-one-out cross-validation. We also compared the model’s usability with four machine learning techniques: support vector regression, radial basis function neural networks, Gaussian process, and random forest. The MLPNN model performed well and outperformed the machine learning techniques. The MLPNN model-estimated AGB ranged between 2.78 and 298.95 Mg ha−1 (average = 55.8 Mg ha−1); below-ground biomass ranged between 4.06 and 436.47 Mg ha−1 (average = 81.47 Mg ha−1), and total carbon stock ranged between 3.22 and 345.65 Mg C ha−1 (average = 64.52 Mg C ha−1). We conclude that ALOS-2 PALSAR data can be accurately used with MLPNN models for estimating mangrove forest biomass in tropical areas.

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the land use and land cover (LULC) changes for thirty years, from 1990–2020, in the Dong Thap Muoi, a flooded land area of the Mekong River Delta of Vietnam using Google Earth Engine and random forest algorithm. The specific purposes are: (1) determine the main LULC classes and (2) compute and analyze the magnitude and rate of changes for these LULC classes. For the above purposes, 128 Landsat images, topographic maps, land use status maps, cadastral maps, and ancillary data were collected and utilized to derive the LULC maps using the random forest classification algorithm. The overall accuracy of the LULC maps for 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020 are 88.9, 83.5, 87.1, and 85.6%, respectively. The result showed that the unused land was dominant in 1990 with 28.9 % of the total area, but it was primarily converted to the paddy, a new dominant LULC class in 2020 (45.1%). The forest was reduced significantly from 14.4% in 1990 to only 5.5% of the total area in 2020. Whereas at the same time, the built-up increased from 0.3% to 6.2% of the total area. This research may help the authorities design exploitation policies for the Dong Thap Muoi’s socio-economic development and develop a new, stable, and sustainable ecosystem, promoting the advantages of the region, early forming a diversified agricultural structure.

The extreme form of land degradation through different forms of erosion is one of the major problems in sub-tropical monsoon dominated region. The formation and development of gullies is the dominant form or active process of erosion in this region. So, identification of erosion prone regions is necessary for escaping this type of situation and maintaining the correspondence between different spheres of the environment. The major goal of this study is to evaluate the gully erosion susceptibility in the rugged topography of the Hinglo River Basin of eastern India, which ultimately contributes to sustainable land management practices. Due to the nature of data instability, the weakness of the classifier andthe ability to handle data, the accuracy of a single method is not very high. Thus, in this study, a novel resampling algorithm was considered to increase the robustness of the classifier and its accuracy. Gully erosion susceptibility maps have been prepared using boosted regression trees (BRT), multivariate adaptive regression spline (MARS) and spatial logistic regression (SLR) with proposed resampling techniques. The re-sampling algorithm was able to increase the efficiency of all predicted models by improving the nature of the classifier. Each variable in the gully inventory map was randomly allocated with 5-fold cross validation, 10-fold cross validation, bootstrap and optimism bootstrap, while each consisted of 30% of the database. The ensemble model was tested using 70% and validated with the other 30% using the K-fold cross validation (CV) method to evaluate the influence of the random selection of training and validation database. Here, all resampling methods are associated with higher accuracy, but SLR bootstrap optimism is more optimal than any other methods according to its robust nature. The AUC values of BRT optimism bootstrap, MARS optimism bootstrap and SLR optimism bootstrap are 87.40%, 90.40% and 90.60%, respectively. According to the SLR optimism bootstrap, the 107,771 km2 (27.51%) area of this region is associated with a very high to high susceptible to gully erosion. This potential developmental area of the gully was found primarily in the Hinglo River Basin, where lateral exposure was mainly observed with scarce vegetation. The outcome of this work can help policy-makers to implement remedial measures to minimize the damage caused by erosion of the gully.

The natural wetland areas in Vietnam, which are transition areas from inland and ocean, play a crucial role in minimizing coastal hazards; however, during the last two decades, about 64% of these areas have been converted from the natural wetland to the human-made wetland. It is anticipated that the conversion rate continues to increase due to economic development and urbanization. Therefore, monitoring and assessment of the wetland are essential for the coastal vulnerability assessment and geo-ecosystem management. The aim of this study is to propose and verify a new deep learning approach to interpret 9 of 19 coastal wetland types classified in the RAMSAR and MONRE systems for the Tien Yen estuary of Vietnam. Herein, a Resnet framework was integrated into the U-Net to optimize the performance of the proposed deep learning model. The Sentinel-2, ALOS-DEM, and NOAA-DEM satellite images were used as the input data, whereas the output is the predefined nine wetland types. As a result, two ResU-Net models using Adam and RMSprop optimizer functions show the accuracy higher than 85%, especially in forested intertidal wetlands, aquaculture ponds, and farm ponds. The better performance of these models was proved, compared to Random Forest and Support Vector Machine methods. After optimizing the ResU-Net models, they were also used to map the coastal wetland areas correctly in the northeastern part of Vietnam. The final model can potentially update new wetland types in the southern parts and islands in Vietnam towards wetland change monitoring in real time.

Landslides are natural and often quasi-normal threats that destroy natural resources and may lead to a persistent loss of human life. Therefore, the preparation of landslide susceptibility maps is necessary in order to mitigate harmful effects. The key objective of this research is to develop landslide susceptibility maps for the Taleghan basin of Alborz province, Iran, using hybrid Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, i.e., k-fold cross validation and ML techniques of credal decision tree (CDT), Alternative Decision Tree (ADTree), and their ensemble method (CDT-ADTree), which have been state-of-the-art soft computing techniques rarely used in the case of landslide susceptibility assessments. In this study, 22 key landslide causative factors (LCFs) were considered to explore their spatial relationship to landslides, based on local geomorphological and geo-environmental influences. The Random Forest (RF) algorithm was used for the identification of variables importance of different LCFs that are more prone to landslide susceptibility. A receiver operation characteristics (ROC) curve with area under the curve (AUC), accuracy, precision, and robustness index was used to evaluate and compare landslide susceptibility models. The output of the model performance shows that the CDT-ADTree model is the more robust model for the landslide susceptibility where the AUC, accuracy, and precision are 0.981, 0.837, and 0.867, respectively, than the standalone model of CDT and ADTree model. Therefore, it is concluded that the CDT-ADTree ensemble model can be applied as a new promising technique for spatial prediction of the landslide in further studies.

The extreme form of land degradation caused by the formation of gullies is a major challenge for the sustainability of land resources. This problem is more vulnerable in the arid and semi-arid environment and associated damage to agriculture and allied economic activities. Appropriate modeling of such erosion is therefore needed with optimum accuracy for estimating vulnerable regions and taking appropriate initiatives. The Golestan Dam has faced an acute problem of gully erosion over the last decade and has adversely affected society. Here, the artificial neural network (ANN), general linear model (GLM), maximum entropy (MaxEnt), and support vector machine (SVM) machine learning algorithm with 90/10, 80/20, 70/30, 60/40, and 50/50 random partitioning of training and validation samples was selected purposively for estimating the gully erosion susceptibility. The main objective of this work was to predict the susceptible zone with the maximum possible accuracy. For this purpose, random partitioning approaches were implemented. For this purpose, 20 gully erosion conditioning factors were considered for predicting the susceptible areas by considering the multi-collinearity test. The variance inflation factor (VIF) and tolerance (TOL) limit were considered for multi-collinearity assessment for reducing the error of the models and increase the efficiency of the outcome. The ANN with 50/50 random partitioning of the sample is the most optimal model in this analysis. The area under curve (AUC) values of receiver operating characteristics (ROC) in ANN (50/50) for the training and validation data are 0.918 and 0.868, respectively. The importance of the causative factors was estimated with the help of the Jackknife test, which reveals that the most important factor is the topography position index (TPI). Apart from this, the prioritization of all predicted models was estimated taking into account the training and validation data set, which should help future researchers to select models from this perspective. This type of outcome should help planners and local stakeholders to implement appropriate land and water conservation measures.

Flash flood is one of the most dangerous natural phenomena because of its high magnitudes and sudden occurrence, resulting in huge damages for people and properties. Our work aims to propose a state-of-the-art model for susceptibility mapping of the flash flood using the decision tree random subspace ensemble optimized by hybrid firefly–particle swarm optimization (HFPS), namely the HFPS-RSTree model. In this work, we used data from a flood inventory map consisting of 1866 polygons derived from Sentinel-1 C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data and a field survey conducted in the northwest mountainous area of the Van Ban district, Lao Cai Province in Vietnam. A total of eleven flooding conditioning factors (soil type, geology, rainfall, river density, elevation, slope, aspect, topographic wetness index (TWI), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), plant curvature, and profile curvature) were used as explanatory variables. These indicators were compiled from a geological and mineral resources map, soil type map, and topographic map, ALOS PALSAR DEM 30 m, and Landsat-8 imagery. The HFPS-RSTree model was trained and verified using the inventory map and the eleven conditioning variables and then compared with four machine learning algorithms, i.e., the support vector machine (SVM), the random forests (RF), the C4.5 decision trees (C4.5 DT), and the logistic model trees (LMT) models. We employed a range of statistical standard metrics to assess the predictive performance of the proposed model. The results show that the HFPS-RSTree model had the best predictive performance and achieved better results than those of other benchmarks with the ability to predict flash flood, reaching an overall accuracy of over 90%. It can be concluded that the proposed approach provides new insights into flash flood prediction in mountainous regions.

In the present paper, three of the main seismic parameters, maximum magnitude -Mmax, b-value, and annual rate -AR, have been studied for the Pyrenees range in southwest Europe by a Geographic Information System (GIS). The main aim of this work is to calculate, represent continuously, and analyze some of the most crucial seismic indicators for this belt. To this end, an updated and homogenized Poissonian earthquake catalog has been generated, where the National Geographic Institute of Spain earthquake catalog has been considered as a starting point. Herein, the details about the catalog compilation, the magnitude homogenization, the declustering of the catalog, and the analysis of the completeness, are exposed. When the catalog has been produced, a GIS tool has been used to drive the parameters’ calculations and representations properly. Different grids (0.5 × 0.5° and 1 × 1°) have been created to depict a continuous map of these parameters. The b-value and AR have been obtained that take into account different pairs of magnitude–year of completeness. Mmax has been discretely obtained (by cells). The analysis of the results shows that the Central Pyrenees (mainly from Arudy to Bagnères de Bigorre) present the most pronounced seismicity in the range.

Flash floods induced by torrential rainfalls are considered one of the most dangerous natural hazards, due to their sudden occurrence and high magnitudes, which may cause huge damage to people and properties. This study proposed a novel modeling approach for spatial prediction of flash floods based on the tree intelligence-based CHAID (Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector)random subspace, optimized by biogeography-based optimization (the CHAID-RS-BBO model), using remote sensing and geospatial data. In this proposed approach, a forest of tree intelligence was constructed through the random subspace ensemble, and, then, the swarm intelligence was employed to train and optimize the model. The Luc Yen district, located in the northwest mountainous area of Vietnam, was selected as a case study. For this circumstance, a flood inventory map with 1866 polygons for the district was prepared based on Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery and field surveys with handheld GPS. Then, a geospatial database with ten influencing variables (land use/land cover, soil type, lithology, river density, rainfall, topographic wetness index, elevation, slope, curvature, and aspect) was prepared. Using the inventory map and the ten explanatory variables, the CHAID-RS-BBO model was trained and verified. Various statistical metrics were used to assess the prediction capability of the proposed model. The results show that the proposed CHAID-RS-BBO model yielded the highest predictive performance, with an overall accuracy of 90% in predicting flash floods, and outperformed benchmarks (i.e., the CHAID, the J48-DT, the logistic regression, and the multilayer perception neural network (MLP-NN) models). We conclude that the proposed method can accurately estimate the spatial prediction of flash floods in tropical storm areas.

The morphometric characteristics of the Kalvārī basin were analyzed to prioritize sub-basins based on their susceptibility to erosion by water using a remote sensing-based data and a GIS. The morphometric parameters (MPs)—linear, relief, and shape—of the drainage network were calculated using data from the Advanced Land-observing Satellite (ALOS) phased-array L-type synthetic-aperture radar (PALSAR) digital elevation model (DEM) with a spatial resolution of 12.5 m. Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) was used to generate the DEM. These parameters revealed the network’s texture, morpho-tectonics, geometry, and relief characteristics. A complex proportional assessment of alternatives (COPRAS)-analytical hierarchy process (AHP) novel-ensemble multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model was used to rank sub-basins and to identify the major MPs that significantly influence erosion landforms of the Kalvārī drainage basin. The results show that in evolutionary terms this is a youthful landscape. Rejuvenation has influenced the erosional development of the basin, but lithology and relief, structure, and tectonics have determined the drainage patterns of the catchment. Results of the AHP model indicate that slope and drainage density influence erosion in the study area. The COPRAS-AHP ensemble model results reveal that sub-basin 1 is the most susceptible to soil erosion (SE) and that sub-basin 5 is least susceptible. The ensemble model was compared to the two individual models using the Spearman correlation coefficient test (SCCT) and the Kendall Tau correlation coefficient test (KTCCT). To evaluate the prediction accuracy of the ensemble model, its results were compared to results generated by the modified Pacific Southwest Inter-Agency Committee (MPSIAC) model in each sub-basin. Based on SCCT and KTCCT, the ensemble model was better at ranking sub-basins than the MPSIAC model, which indicated that sub-basins 1 and 4, with mean sediment yields of 943.7 and 456.3 m 3 km − 2 year − 1 , respectively, have the highest and lowest SE susceptibility in the study area. The sensitivity analysis revealed that the most sensitive parameters of the MPSIAC model are slope (R2 = 0.96), followed by runoff (R2 = 0.95). The MPSIAC shows that the ensemble model has a high prediction accuracy. The method tested here has been shown to be an effective tool to improve sustainable soil management.

This analysis aims to generate landslide susceptibility maps (LSMs) using various machine learning methods, namely random forest (RF), alternative decision tree (ADTree) and Fisher’s Linear Discriminant Function (FLDA). The results of the FLDA, RF and ADTree models were compared with regard to their applicability for creating an LSM of the Gallicash river watershed in the northern part of Iran close to the Caspian Sea. A landslide inventory map was created using GPS points obtained in a field analysis, high-resolution satellite images, topographic maps and historical records. A total of 249 landslide sites have been identified to date and were used in this study to model and validate the LSMs of the study region. Of the 249 landslide locations, 70% were used as training data and 30% for the validation of the resulting LSMs. Sixteen factors related to topographical, hydrological, soil type, geological and environmental conditions were used and a multi-collinearity test of the landslide conditioning factors (LCFs) was performed. Using the natural break method (NBM) in a geographic information system (GIS), the LSMs generated by the RF, FLDA, and ADTree models were categorized into five classes, namely very low, low, medium, high and very high landslide susceptibility (LS) zones. The very high susceptibility zones cover 15.37% (ADTree), 16.10% (FLDA) and 11.36% (RF) of the total catchment area. The results of the different models (FLDA, RF, and ADTree) were explained and compared using the area under receiver operating characteristics (AUROC) curve, seed cell area index (SCAI), efficiency and true skill statistic (TSS). The accuracy of models was calculated considering both the training and validation data. The results revealed that the AUROC success rates are 0.89 (ADTree), 0.92 (FLDA) and 0.97 (RF) and predication rates are 0.82 (ADTree), 0.79 (FLDA) and 0.98 (RF), which justifies the approach and indicates a reasonably good landslide prediction. The results of the SCAI, efficiency and TSS methods showed that all models have an excellent modeling capability. In a comparison of the models, the RF model outperforms the boosted regression tree (BRT) and ADTree models. The results of the landslide susceptibility modeling could be useful for land-use planning and decision-makers, for managing and controlling the current and future landslides, as well as for the protection of society and the ecosystem.

Gully erosion is a form of natural disaster and one of the land loss mechanisms causing severe problems worldwide. This study aims to delineate the areas with the most severe gully erosion susceptibility (GES) using the machine learning techniques Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosted Regression Tree (GBRT), Naïve Bayes Tree (NBT), and Tree Ensemble (TE). The gully inventory map (GIM) consists of 120 gullies. Of the 120 gullies, 84 gullies (70%) were used for training and 36 gullies (30%) were used to validate the models. Fourteen gully conditioning factors (GCFs) were used for GES modeling and the relationships between the GCFs and gully erosion was assessed using the weight-of-evidence (WofE) model. The GES maps were prepared using RF, GBRT, NBT, and TE and were validated using area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve, the seed cell area index (SCAI) and five statistical measures including precision (PPV), false discovery rate (FDR), accuracy, mean absolute error (MAE), and root mean squared error (RMSE). Nearly 7% of the basin has high to very high susceptibility for gully erosion. Validation results proved the excellent ability of these models to predict the GES. Of the analyzed models, the RF (AUROC = 0.96, PPV = 1.00, FDR = 0.00, accuracy = 0.87, MAE = 0.11, RMSE = 0.19 for validation dataset) is accurate enough for modeling and better suited for GES modeling than the other models. Therefore, the RF model can be used to model the GES areas not only in this river basin but also in other areas with the same geo-environmental conditions.

Gullying is a type of soil erosion that currently represents a major threat at the societal scale and will likely increase in the future. In Iran, soil erosion, and specifically gullying, is already causing significant distress to local economies by affecting agricultural productivity and infrastructure. Recognizing this threat has recently led the Iranian geomorphology community to focus on the problem across the whole country. This study is in line with other efforts where the optimal method to map gully-prone areas is sought by testing state-of-the-art machine learning tools. In this study, we compare the performance of three machine learning algorithms, namely Fisher’s linear discriminant analysis (FLDA), logistic model tree (LMT) and naïve Bayes tree (NBTree). We also introduce three novel ensemble models by combining the aforementioned base classifiers to the Random SubSpace (RS) meta-classifier namely RS-FLDA, RS-LMT and RS-NBTree. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC), true skill statistics (TSS) and kappa criteria are used for calibration (goodness-of-fit) and validation (prediction accuracy) datasets to compare the performance of the different algorithms. In addition to susceptibility mapping, we also study the association between gully erosion and a set of morphometric, hydrologic and thematic properties by adopting the evidential belief function (EBF). The results indicate that hydrology-related factors contribute the most to gully formation, which is also confirmed by the susceptibility patterns displayed by the RS-NBTree ensemble. The RS-NBTree is the model that outperforms the other five models, as indicated by the prediction accuracy (area under curve (AUC) = 0.898, Kappa = 0.748 and TSS = 0.697), and goodness-of-fit (AUC = 0.780, Kappa = 0.682 and TSS = 0.618). The analyses are performed with the same gully presence/absence balanced modeling design. Therefore, the differences in performance are dependent on the algorithm architecture. Overall, the EBF model can detect strong and reasonable dependencies towards gully-prone conditions. The RS-NBTree ensemble model performed significantly better than the others, suggesting greater flexibility towards unknown data, which may support the applications of these methods in transferable susceptibility models in areas that are potentially erodible but currently lack gully data.

This editorial summarizes the performance of the special issue entitled Advanced Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics in Remote Sensing for Natural Hazards Management, which was published at MDPI’s Remote Sensing journal. The special issue took place in years 2018 and 2019 and accepted a total of nine papers from authors of thirteen different countries. So far, these papers have dealt with 116 cites. Earthquakes, landslides, floods, wildfire and soil salinity were the topics analyzed. New methods were introduced, with applications of the utmost relevance.

This paper proposed and verified a new integrated approach based on the iterative super-resolution algorithm and expectation-maximization for face hallucination, which is a process of converting a low-resolution face image to a high-resolution image. The current sparse representation for super resolving generic image patches is not suitable for global face images due to its lower accuracy and time-consumption. To solve this, in the new method, training global face sparse representation was used to reconstruct images with misalignment variations after the local geometric co-occurrence matrix. In the testing phase, we proposed a hybrid method, which is a combination of the sparse global representation and the local linear regression using the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. Therefore, this work recovered the high-resolution image of a corresponding low-resolution image. Experimental validation suggested improvement of the overall accuracy of the proposed method with fast identification of high-resolution face images without misalignment.

The prediction aptitude of an artificial neural network (ANN) is improved by incorporating two novel metaheuristic techniques, namely, the shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) and wind-driven optimization (WDO), for the purpose of soil shear strength (simply called shear strength) simulation. Soil information of the Trung Luong national expressway project (Vietnam) including depth of the sample (m), percentage of sand, percentage of silt, percentage of clay, percentage of moisture content, wet density (kg/m3), liquid limit (%), plastic limit (%), plastic index (%), liquidity index, and the shear strength (kPa) was collocated through a field survey. After constructing the hybrid ensembles of SFLA−ANN and WDO−ANN, both models were optimized in terms of complexity using a population-based trial-and error-scheme. The learning quality of the ANN was compared with both improved versions to examine the effect of the used metaheuristic techniques. In this phase, the training error dropped by 14.25% and 28.25% by applying the SFLA and WDO, respectively. This reflects a significant improvement in pattern recognition ability of the ANN. The results of the testing data revealed 25.57% and 39.25% decreases in generalization (i.e., testing) error. Moreover, the correlation between the measured and predicted shear strengths (i.e., the coefficient of determination) rose from 0.82 to 0.89 and 0.92, which indicates the efficiency of both SFLA and WDO metaheuristic techniques in optimizing the ANN.

Gully erosion is a problem; therefore, it must be predicted using highly accurate predictive models to avoid losses caused by gully development and to guarantee sustainable development. This research investigates the predictive performance of seven multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM), statistical, and machine learning (ML)-based models and their ensembles for gully erosion susceptibility mapping (GESM). A case study of the Dasjard River watershed, Iran uses a database of 306 gully head cuts and 15 conditioning factors. The database was divided 70:30 to train and verify the models. Their performance was assessed with the area under prediction rate curve (AUPRC), the area under success rate curve (AUSRC), accuracy, and kappa. Results show that slope is key to gully formation. The maximum entropy (ME) ML model has the best performance (AUSRC = 0.947, AUPRC = 0.948, accuracy = 0.849 and kappa = 0.699). The second best is the random forest (RF) model (AUSRC = 0.965, AUPRC = 0.932, accuracy = 0.812 and kappa = 0.624). By contrast, the TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) model was the least effective (AUSRC = 0.871, AUPRC = 0.867, accuracy = 0.758 and kappa = 0.516). RF increased the performance of statistical index (SI) and frequency ratio (FR) statistical models. Furthermore, the combination of a generalized linear model (GLM), and functional data analysis (FDA) improved their performances. The results demonstrate that a combination of geographic information systems (GIS) with remote sensing (RS)-based ML models can successfully map gully erosion susceptibility, particularly in low-income and developing regions. This method can aid the analyses and decisions of natural resources managers and local planners to reduce damages by focusing attention and resources on areas prone to the worst and most damaging gully erosion.

The main objective of this study is to investigate potential application of an integrated evidential belief function (EBF)-based fuzzy logic model for spatial prediction of rainfall-induced shallow landslides in the Lang Son city area (Vietnam). First, a landslide inventory map was constructed from various sources. Then the landslide inventory map was randomly partitioned as a ratio of 70/30 for training and validation of the models, respectively. Second, six landslide conditioning factors (slope angle, slope aspect, lithology, distance to faults, soil type, land use) were prepared and fuzzy membership values for these factors classes were estimated using the EBF. Subsequently, fuzzy operators were used to generate landslide susceptibility maps. Finally, the susceptibility maps were validated and compared using the validation dataset. The results show that the lowest prediction capability is the fuzzy SUM (76.6%). The prediction capability is almost the same for the fuzzy PRODUCT and fuzzy GAMMA models (79.6%). Compared to the frequency-ratio based fuzzy logic models, the EBF-based fuzzy logic models showed better result in both the success rate and prediction rate. The results from this study may be useful for local planner in areas prone to landslides. The modelling approach can be applied for other areas.

Gully erosion is considered to be one of the main causes of land degradation in arid and semi-arid territories around the world. In this research, gully erosion susceptibility mapping was carried out in Semnan province (Iran) as a case study in which we tested the efficiency of the index of entropy (IoE), the Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method, and their combination. Remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) were used to reduce the time and costs needed for rapid assessment of gully erosion. Firstly, a gully erosion inventory map (GEIM) with 206 gully locations was obtained from various sources and randomly divided into two groups: A training dataset (70% of the data) and a validation dataset (30% of the data). Fifteen gully-related conditioning factors (GRCFs) including elevation, slope, aspect, plan curvature, stream power index, topographical wetness index, rainfall, soil type, drainage density, distance to river, distance to road, distance to fault, lithology, land use/land cover, and soil type, were used for modeling. The advanced land observing satellite (ALOS) digital elevation model with a spatial resolution of 30 m was used for the extraction of the above-mentioned topographic factors. The tolerance (TOL) and variance inflation factor (VIF) were also included for checking the multicollinearity among the GRCFs. Based on IoE, we concluded that soil type, lithology, and elevation were the most significant in terms of gully formation. Validation results using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) showed that IoE (0.941) reached a higher prediction accuracy than VIKOR (0.857) and VIKOR-IoE (0.868). Based on our results, the combination of statistical (IoE) models along with remote sensing and GIS can convert the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) models into efficient and powerful tools for gully erosion prediction. We strongly suggest that decision-makers and managers should use these kinds of results to develop more consistent solutions to achieve sustainable development on degraded lands such as in the Semnan province.

The International Roughness Index (IRI) is the one of the most important roughness indexes to quantify road surface roughness. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid approach between adaptive network based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and various meta-heuristic optimizations such as the genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and the firefly algorithm (FA) to develop several hybrid models namely GA based ANGIS (GANFIS), PSO based ANFIS (PSOANFIS), FA based ANFIS (FAANFIS), respectively, for the prediction of the IRI. A benchmark model named artificial neural networks (ANN) was also used to compare with those hybrid models. To do this, a total of 2811 samples in the case study of the north of Vietnam (Northwest region, Northeast region, and the Red River Delta Area) within the scope of management of the DRM-I Department were used to validate the models in terms of various criteria like coefficient of determination (R) and the root mean square error (RMSE). Experimental results affirmed the potentiality and effectiveness of the proposed prediction models whereas the PSOANFIS (RMSE = 0.145 and R = 0.888) is better than the other models named GANFIS (RMSE = 0.155 and R = 0.872), FAANFIS (RMSE = 0.170 and R = 0.849), and ANN (RMSE = 0.186 and R = 0.804). The results of this study are helpful for accurate prediction of the IRI for evaluation of quality of road surface roughness.

This paper focuses on the prediction of soil shear strength (SSS), which is one of the most fundamental parameters in geotechnical engineering. Consisting of 12 influential factors, namely depth of sample, percentage of sand, percentage of loam, percentage of clay, percentage of moisture content, wet density, dry density, void ratio, liquid limit, plastic limit, plastic Index, and liquidity index as input variables, as well as the shear strength as the desired output, the dataset is provided through a field survey in Vietnam. Thereafter, as for used intelligent techniques, the main focus of the current study is on evaluating the efficiency of three novel optimization techniques for optimizing an artificial neural network (ANN) in predicting the SSS. To this end, the dragonfly algorithm (DA), whale optimization algorithm (WOA), and invasive weed optimization (IWO) are synthesized with ANN to prevail its computational drawbacks. The complexity of the models is optimized by sensitivity analysis. The results confirmed the effectiveness of all three applied algorithms, as the learning error was reduced by nearly 17%, 27%, and 32%, respectively by functioning the DA, WOA, and IWO. As for the testing phase, the IWO and DA achieved a close prediction accuracy. Overall, due to the superiority of the IWO-ANN ensemble, this model could be a promising alternative to traditional methods of shear strength determination.

In the design phase of housing projects, predicting the settlement of soil layers beneath the buildings requires the estimation of the coefficient of soil compression. This study proposes a low-cost, fast, and reliable alternative for estimating this soil parameter utilizing a hybrid metaheuristic optimized neural network (NN). An integrated method of artificial bee colony (ABC) and the Levenberg−Marquardt (LM) algorithm is put forward to train the NN inference model. The model is capable of delivering the response variable of soil compression coefficient a set of physical properties of soil. A large-scale real-life urban project at Hai Phong city (Vietnam) was selected as a case study. Accordingly, a dataset of 441 samples with their corresponding testing values of the compression coefficient has been collected and prepared during the construction phase. Experimental outcomes confirm that the proposed NN model with the hybrid ABC-LM training algorithm has attained the highly accurate estimation of the soil compression coefficient with root mean square error (RMSE) = 0.008, mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) = 10.180%, and coefficient of determination (R2) = 0.864. Thus, the proposed machine learning method can be a promising tool for geotechnical engineers in the design phase of housing projects.

Two novel hybrid predictors are suggested as the combination of artificial neural network (ANN), coupled with spotted hyena optimizer (SHO) and ant lion optimization (ALO) metaheuristic techniques, to simulate soil shear strength (SSS). These algorithms were applied to the ANN for counteracting the computational drawbacks of this model. As a function of ten key factors of the soil (including depth of the sample, percentage of sand, percentage of loam, percentage of clay, percentage of moisture content, wet density, liquid limit, plastic limit, plastic Index, and liquidity index), the SSS was considered as the response variable. Followed by development of the ALO−ANN and SHO−ANN ensembles, the best-fitted structures were determined by a trial and error process. The results demonstrated the efficiency of both applied algorithms, as the prediction error of the ANN was reduced by around 35% and 18% by the ALO and SHO, respectively. A comparison between the results revealed that the ALO−ANN (Error = 0.0619 and Correlation = 0.9348) performs more efficiently than the SHO−ANN (Error = 0.0874 and Correlation = 0.8866). Finally, an SSS predictive formula is presented for use as an alternative to the difficult traditional methods.

Slump is a workability-related characteristic of concrete mixture. This paper investigates the efficiency of a novel optimizer, namely ant lion optimization (ALO), for fine-tuning of a neural network (NN) in the field of concrete slump prediction. Two well-known optimization techniques, biogeography-based optimization (BBO) and grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA), are also considered as benchmark models to be compared with ALO. Considering seven slump effective factors, namely cement, slag, water, fly ash, superplasticizer (SP), fine aggregate (FA), and coarse aggregate (CA), the mentioned algorithms are synthesized with a neural network to determine the best-fitted neural parameters. The most appropriate complexity of each ensemble is also found by a population-based sensitivity analysis. The findings revealed that the proposed ALO-NN model acquires a good approximation of concrete slump, regarding the calculated root mean square error (RMSE = 3.7788) and mean absolute error (MAE = 3.0286). It also outperformed both BBO-NN (RMSE = 4.1859 and MAE = 3.3465) and GOA-NN (RMSE = 4.9553 and MAE = 3.8576) ensembles.

The heating load calculation is the first step of the iterative heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) design procedure. In this study, we employed six machine learning techniques, namely multi-layer perceptron regressor (MLPr), lazy locally weighted learning (LLWL), alternating model tree (AMT), random forest (RF), ElasticNet (ENet), and radial basis function regression (RBFr) for the problem of designing energy-efficient buildings. After that, these approaches were used to specify a relationship among the parameters of input and output in terms of the energy performance of buildings. The calculated outcomes for datasets from each of the above-mentioned models were analyzed based on various known statistical indexes like root relative squared error (RRSE), root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), correlation coefficient (R2), and relative absolute error (RAE). It was found that between the discussed machine learning-based solutions of MLPr, LLWL, AMT, RF, ENet, and RBFr, the RF was nominated as the most appropriate predictive network. The RF network outcomes determined the R2, MAE, RMSE, RAE, and RRSE for the training dataset to be 0.9997, 0.19, 0.2399, 2.078, and 2.3795, respectively. The RF network outcomes determined the R2, MAE, RMSE, RAE, and RRSE for the testing dataset to be 0.9989, 0.3385, 0.4649, 3.6813, and 4.5995, respectively. These results show the superiority of the presented RF model in estimation of early heating load in energy-efficient buildings.

In this paper, the authors investigated the applicability of combining machine-learning-based models toward slope stability assessment. To do this, several well-known machine-learning-based methods, namely multiple linear regression (MLR), multi-layer perceptron (MLP), radial basis function regression (RBFR), improved support vector machine using sequential minimal optimization algorithm (SMO-SVM), lazy k-nearest neighbor (IBK), random forest (RF), and random tree (RT), were selected to evaluate the stability of a slope through estimating the factor of safety (FOS). In the following, a comparative classification was carried out based on the five stability categories. Based on the respective values of total scores (the summation of scores obtained for the training and testing stages) of 15, 35, 48, 15, 50, 60, and 57, acquired for MLR, MLP, RBFR, SMO-SVM, IBK, RF, and RT, respectively, it was concluded that RF outperformed other intelligent models. The results of statistical indexes also prove the excellent prediction from the optimized structure of the ANN and RF techniques.

In the present work, we employed artificial neural network (ANN) that is optimized with two hybrid models, namely imperialist competition algorithm (ICA) as well as particle swarm optimization (PSO) in the case of the problem of bearing capacity of shallow circular footing systems. Many types of research have shown that ANNs are valuable techniques for estimating the bearing capacity of the soils. However, most ANN training models have some drawbacks. This study aimed to focus on the application of two well-known hybrid ICA−ANN and PSO−ANN models to the estimation of bearing capacity of the circular footing lied in layered soils. In order to provide the training and testing datasets for the predictive network models, extensive finite element (FE) modelling (a database includes 2810 training datasets and 703 testing datasets) are performed on 16 soil layer sets (weaker soil rested on stronger soil and vice versa). Note that all the independent variables of ICA and PSO algorithms are optimized utilizing a trial and error method. The input includes upper layer thickness/foundation width (h/B) ratio, footing width (B), top and bottom soil layer properties (e.g., six of the most critical soil characteristics), vertical settlement of circular footing (s), where the output was taken ultimate bearing capacity of the circular footing (Fult). Based on coefficient of determination (R2) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), amounts of (0.979, 0.076) and (0.984, 0.066) predicted for training dataset and amounts of (0.978, 0.075) and (0.983, 0.066) indicated in the case of the testing dataset of proposed PSO−ANN and ICA−ANN models of prediction network, respectively. It demonstrates a higher reliability of the presented PSO−ANN model for predicting ultimate bearing capacity of circular footing located on double sandy layer soils.

By the assist of remotely sensed data, this study examines the viability of slope stability monitoring using two novel conventional models. The proposed models are considered to be the combination of neuro-fuzzy (NF) system along with invasive weed optimization (IWO) and elephant herding optimization (EHO) evolutionary techniques. Considering the conditioning factors of land use, lithology, soil type, rainfall, distance to the road, distance to the river, slope degree, elevation, slope aspect, profile curvature, plan curvature, stream power index (SPI), and topographic wetness index (TWI), it is aimed to achieve a reliable approximation of landslide occurrence likelihood for unseen environmental conditions. To this end, after training the proposed EHO-NF and IWO-NF ensembles using training landslide events, their generalization power is evaluated by receiving operating characteristic curves. The results demonstrated around 75% accuracy of prediction for both models; however, the IWO-NF achieved a better understanding of landslide distribution pattern. Due to the successful performance of the implemented models, they could be promising alternatives to mathematical and analytical approaches being used for discerning the relationship between the slope failure and environmental parameters.

Regular optimization techniques have been widely used in landslide-related problems. This paper outlines two novel optimizations of artificial neural network (ANN) using grey wolf optimization (GWO) and biogeography-based optimization (BBO) metaheuristic algorithms in the Ardabil province, Iran. To this end, these algorithms are synthesized with a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network for optimizing its computational parameters. The used spatial database consists of fourteen landslide conditioning factors, namely elevation, slope aspect, land use, plan curvature, profile curvature, soil type, distance to river, distance to road, distance to fault, rainfall, slope degree, stream power index (SPI), topographic wetness index (TWI) and lithology. 70% of the identified landslides are randomly selected to train the proposed models and the remaining 30% is used to evaluate the accuracy of them. Also, the frequency ratio theory is used to analyze the spatial interaction between the landslide and conditioning factors. Obtained values of area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, as well as mean square error and mean absolute error showed that both GWO and BBO hybrid algorithms could efficiently improve the learning capability of the MLP. Besides, the BBO-based ensemble surpasses other implemented models.