Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk

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An integrated approach based landslide

susceptibility mapping: case of Muzaffarabad
region, Pakistan

Mubeen ul Basharat, Junaid Ali Khan, Hazem Ghassan Abdo & Hussein
Almohamad

To cite this article: Mubeen ul Basharat, Junaid Ali Khan, Hazem Ghassan Abdo & Hussein
Almohamad (2023) An integrated approach based landslide susceptibility mapping: case of
Muzaffarabad region, Pakistan, Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk, 14:1, 2210255, DOI:
10.1080/19475705.2023.2210255

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19475705.2023.2210255

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Published online: 09 May 2023.

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GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK
2023, VOL. 14, NO. 1, 2210255
https://doi.org/10.1080/19475705.2023.2210255

An integrated approach based landslide susceptibility

mapping: case of Muzaffarabad region, Pakistan
Mubeen ul Basharata, Junaid Ali Khana, Hazem Ghassan Abdob,c and Hussein
Almohamadd
a
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, HITEC University, Taxila, Pakistan; bGeography
Department, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Tartous University, Tartous, Syria; cGeography
Department, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Damascus University, Damascus, Syria; dDepartment of
Geography, College of Arabic Language and Social Studies, Qassim University, Buraydah 51452,
Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Landslides result in the devastation of property and loss of lives. Received 22 February 2023
This study assesses landslide susceptibility by employing geo- Accepted 28 April 2023
graphic information systems (GIS) and machine learning techni-
KEYWORDS
ques, that is, support vector machine (SVM) and artificial neural
Muzaffarabad district;
network (ANN), with the integration of advanced optimization landslide susceptibility
techniques, that is, particle swarm optimization (PSO). The land- maps; optimization;
slide-inducing factors considered in this study include fault dens- machine learning
ity, lithology, road density, slope, elevation, flow direction, aspect, techniques; risk assessment
earthquake intensity, curvature, Normalized Difference Water
Index (NDWI), waterways density, rainfall, and Normalized
Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The resulting landslide sus-
ceptibility maps (LSMs) showed that the areas falling under the
high and very high susceptibility class have higher rainfall levels,
weak lithology, high NDWI, and flow direction. The accuracy
assessment of the techniques showed that ANN with an Area
Under the Curve (AUC) of 0.81 performed better than SVM with
an AUC of 0.78 without the optimization. Similarly, the perform-
ance of ANN was also better than SVM using PSO. During the
integrated modeling, the AUC of PSO-ANN was 0.87, whereas the
AUC of PSO–SVM was 0.84. The accuracy assessment of the pro-
duced LSMs also showed a similar trend in terms of accuracy per-
centage as that of the models.

1. Introduction
Landslides are often considered to be one of the most destructive types of natural
hazards. causing extensive destruction, including harm to natural resources, cause
loss of life, and lead to the destruction of property (Mondini et al. 2021). Almost
everywhere in the world, there are different types, frequencies, and intensities of

CONTACT Hazem Ghassan Abdo [email protected]

ß 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by
the author(s) or with their consent.
2 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

landslides, such as rockfall and debris flow (Zhu et al. 2019; Abdo et al. 2022;
Ghorbanzadeh et al. 2022). Primarily in the world’s hilly regions, they are acknowl-
edged as the most dangerous natural hazards causing colossal destruction (Zhu et al.
2019; Abdo et al. 2022; Maqsoom et al. 2022). Landslide hazard losses are anticipated
to escalate in the future due to increased urbanization, economic growth, and atypical
occurrence of severe regional precipitation brought on by climate change (Saha et al.
2021; Jakob 2022; Li et al. 2022; Naceur et al. 2022). Furthermore, early mapping of
landslides in the aftermath of heavy rains or severe earthquakes is critical for speedy
reaction, delivery of humanitarian aid, and other disaster mitigation measures.
(Piralilou et al. 2021; Jaafari et al. 2022; Pham et al. 2022). Therefore, it is vital to
research and assesses this severe natural hazard in order to prevent and lessen its
devastating effects through susceptibility modeling and offering susceptibility maps
(Bai et al. 2021; Piralilou et al. 2021; Yuan et al. 2022).
The creation of accurate and precise landslide maps is crucial for effective risk
assessment. Achieving high-quality landslide susceptibility models typically involves
utilizing various geospatial factors that trigger landslides, including elevation, land
use, aspect, geology, land cover, slope, and other relevant variables (Mallick et al.
2021). Numerous studies were conducted in the past to examine landslide risk using
various methods, as evidenced in the existing literature. In 2022, Saleh Yousefi and
colleagues conducted a study to evaluate the susceptibility of a 6682 km area to land-
slides. They utilized a two-step methodology that involved creating landslide suscepti-
bility maps using (a) boosted regression trees, (b) random forest, (c) multivariate
adaptive regression splines, and (d) multiple discriminant analysis. In addition, they
applied the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to determine the exposure of roads to
landslides by assigning weights to four buffer zones (i.e., 0–50 m; 50–150 m; 150–
300 m; and >300 m) based on their proximity to the road network (Yousefi et al.
2022a). In 2019, Ataollah Shirzadi and co-authors conducted a study to examine the
impact of sample size and raster resolution on the accuracy of landslide susceptibility
modeling and prediction of shallow landslides. They used the Information Gain Ratio
technique to assess the usefulness of each conditioning factor, and they employed the
Alternating Decision Tree, which is not commonly used in landslide modeling, to
develop their models (Shirzadi et al. 2019). Moreover, numerous other studies have
established the superiority of ANN and support vector machine (SVM; Dou et al.
2015; Pham et al. 2016; Chen et al. 2017a; Xi et al. 2019; Yu and Chen 2020; Gautam
et al. 2021; Liu et al. 2021; Maqsoom et al. 2022; Aslam et al. 2022c) when used indi-
vidually or when integrated with other techniques.
For instance, Pham et al. (2016) measured the effectiveness of five ML methods
for assessing the susceptibility of landslides in Uttarakhand, India: Fisher’s Linear
Discriminant Analysis (FLDA), LGR, Bayesian Network, NB, and SVM. They found
that in comparison with the other methods, SVM performed better. For the landslide
susceptibility mapping of the Indrawati watershed in Nepal, Gautam et al. (2021)
employed four ML techniques: LGR, ANN, SVM, and frequency ratio. They discov-
ered that ANN outperforms all of the other techniques. Also, Aslam et al. (2021)
adopted a methodology involving the integration of conventional ML techniques,
namely support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and logistic regression
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 3

(LGR), with the DL technique of convolution neural network (CNN) for landslide
susceptibility mapping. For feature extraction and modeling during the integration
phase, CNN and ML techniques were used, respectively. The outcomes demonstrated
that SVM outperformed other models when used exclusively for modeling. Also,
when integrated with CNN, SVM showed significant improvement, followed by LGR
and RF. To further explore the performance of various techniques, Aslam et al.
(2022a) compared different conventional and unconventional ML techniques, includ-
ing Linear Discriminant Analysis, Naïve Bayes (NB), Quadratic Discriminant
Analysis, RF, Multivariate Adaptive Regression Spline, Artificial Neural Network
(ANN) for the same objective. The authors observed that the ANN outperformed the
other techniques. Furthermore, witnessing the performance of ANN in Aslam et al.
(2022a) and CNN in Aslam et al. (2021), Aslam et al. (2022b) compared multiple
neural networks, including different CNN architectures and residual network
(ResNet), and found that ResNet outperformed others. From these previously con-
ducted studies, it can be concluded that among the conventional ML techniques,
ANN and SVM were the best in terms of their performance and that the model inte-
gration enhances the predictions.
In general, researchers have employed different methodologies to generate final land-
slide susceptibility models. These methodologies include physical-based, heuristic, and
statistical approaches (Huang et al. 2017; He et al. 2019). The physical-based approach
involves the use of physical principles and equations to predict the probability of land-
slides. These methods require detailed topographical data and are best suited for small
areas (Huang et al. 2017). Heuristic approaches, on the other hand, rely on expert know-
ledge and judgment to identify areas that are prone to landslides based on past experien-
ces and observations, making them somewhat subjective and potentially biased. As a
result, they often produce moderately accurate results (He et al. 2019). Statistical methods
use quantitative analysis of data to identify the key factors that contribute to landslide sus-
ceptibility, but they require normally distributed triggering factors, which can be difficult
to obtain (He et al. 2019). In contrast, machine learning algorithms have gained popular-
ity due to advancements in remote sensing databases and algorithm development
(Maqsoom et al. 2022) and some examples of commonly used algorithms are ANN,
SVM, RF, and decision tree (Tien Bui et al. 2018; Achour and Pourghasemi 2020; Pandey
et al. 2020). However, these algorithms have their limitations, including the potential for
local optimum, over-fitting, and slow training speed (Hussain et al. 2022).
To address the limitations of traditional machine learning algorithms and generate
high-quality landslide susceptibility maps, researchers have developed and utilized
ensemble machine learning algorithms. These algorithms have demonstrated superior
performance in generating landslide susceptibility maps, including naive Bayes,
AdaBoost, random subspace, ANFIS, Rotation forest, Reptree, and bagging (Park
et al. 2019; Chen et al. 2021b). The success of these algorithms has inspired scholars
to produce and test new ensemble machine-learning models for generating even
more precise landslide susceptibility maps. However, there is no consensus on the
optimal approach for landslide susceptibility modeling, researchers suggest continued
development and testing of new models in order to achieve the highest possible
accuracy (Talukdar et al. 2020; Islam et al. 2021).
4 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

It has been noted that many ensemble machine-learning algorithms suffer from
over-fitting (Talukdar et al. 2020). Eshtay et al. (2018) reported that the weights of
the input layers in some ensemble machine learning algorithms are randomly pro-
duced and not optimized during the training phase, leading to unstable performance
and the potential for overfitting. To address this issue, they proposed the use of meta-
heuristic optimization algorithms, such as particle swarm optimization (PSO), to
search for the best parameters and optimize the weights of the input layer. Xi et al.
(2019) in their study evaluated the effectiveness of particle swarm optimization
(PSO), a cutting-edge optimization technique, in improving the effectiveness of ANN
in simulating the seismic landslides in China’s Ludian districts. Results from the PSO
algorithm showed that the performance of ANN experienced a significant increase.
Similarly, in the study of Zhao and Zhao (2021), SVM and PSO were combined, and
the use of grid and slope units was examined in order to evaluate the methodologies
for creating LSMs in Luoyang County, China. The outcomes demonstrated that PSO–
SVM with slope units outperformed in terms of landslide susceptibility mapping in
contrast to the same model with grid units and the individual SVM model with both
units. In these previously mentioned two studies, the performance of SVM and ANN
was improved after the optimization with PSO, which shows the efficacy of PSO.
Therefore from the literature above, it is deduced that ML techniques, when opti-
mized with PSO, provide more accurate results.
The district of Muzaffarabad is the capital of the state of Azad Jammu and
Kashmir (AJK), which is an earthquake-prone region owing to its topographical set-
tings. Previously, rainfalls and earthquakes are established majorly as the sources of
activation of landslides in the region (Owen et al. 2008). The region has been exposed
to frequent earthquakes of various degrees (Rossetto and Peiris 2009). An example of
an extremely devastating earthquake event is the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. The
earthquake brought havoc not only to Muzaffarabad city, which was the epicentre but
also to its surrounding areas and disrupted several slopes prompting 158 landslides
(Kamp et al. 2008; Khan et al. 2011). There are limited studies concerning the map-
ping of landslides in this region. To the best of our knowledge, the majority of these
investigations only utilized conventional statistical and machine learning (ML) techni-
ques. For example, Kamp et al. (2008) used the GIS-based multi-criteria evaluation
method in their study for plotting landslide susceptibility in Kashmir during the
earthquake of 2005 with the help of eight exploited landslide-inducing factors. Other
studies that investigated the assessment of landslide dangers influencing the same
area included Owen et al. (2008), Saba et al. (2010), Khattak et al. (2010), Riaz et al.
(2018), Batool et al. (2021), Hussain et al. (2022), Ahmad et al. (2022) and were lim-
ited to conventional techniques. Therefore, the combination of machine learning
techniques optimized with metaheuristic optimization algorithms such as PSO can
provide reliable and better results for landslide susceptibility mapping in the
Muzafarabad region, which can ultimately aid in risk assessment and better disaster
risk management of the region.
The objective of this study is to conduct the landslide susceptibility investigation
of the Muzaffarabad region using state-of-the-art ML techniques and an optimization
technique. The used optimization technique is PSO, and ML techniques are SVM and
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 5

ANN. The latest landslide inventory and a database of landslide-inducing factors

were exploited to establish the models and ultimately generate the study area’s land-
slide susceptibility maps (LSMs). Moreover, as established previously that the techni-
ques involving integrated models perform better than the individual model. This
study aims to assess if the integration of PSO and ML techniques fosters better
results. Thus, the purpose of using the two ML techniques is to evaluate their effect-
iveness independently and in the case of integration with PSO. This study used 13
landslide-inducing factors derived from the latest available data for the specified
objective stated above.

2. Study area
Geographically speaking, Muzaffarabad region lies in northern Pakistan’s lower
Himalayas, in the AJK region. The Muzaffarabad region is tectonically uplifted and
dissected by the Main Boundary Thrust (MBT) and Bagh-Balakot faults (known for
crustal deformation) (Kazmi and Jan 1997; Saba et al. 2010). The NW Himalayan
Syntaxis, where crustal-scale north-leaning fold makeups are overlain over EW local
thrusts, is where Northern Pakistan is located. Among these significant north-swerv-
ing folds is the Hazara-Kashmir Syntaxis, where significant regional thrusts are folded
over Syntaxis’ northern extremity. The MBT and the Panjal Thrust are somewhat
amalgamated as they loop around the Syntaxis. The Muzaffarabad Thrust, a third
fault that borders the Kashmir-Himalaya at its southwest corner and extends diag-
onally over the Hazara-Kashmir Syntaxis’ central region before merging with the
MBT-Panjal Thrust at the Syntaxis’ western edge (Baig 2006). A 75 km stretch of this
fault was ruptured by the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, running from Balakot in the
northwest through Muzaffarabad to Bagh in the southeast. (Avouac et al. 2006).
The district is located on a very high and steep hilly terrain above the Neelum as
well as the Jhelum river. The considered area is eminent for the earthquake having a
magnitude of 7.5 in 2005, causing more than 80 thousand deaths (Avouac et al. 2006;
Rai and Murty 2006). Muzaffarabad is the capital of AJK and has an area of
20,665 m2. It is located with the geographical coordinates of 34
210 3000 N and
73
280 2000 E. The city of Muzaffarabad suffered the most due to the devastating
Kashmir 2005 earthquake (Rai and Murty 2006).
The climate of the region varies greatly. December to February are cold months
with snowfall on high mountain peaks. Snowmelt occurs in June, July, and August
because of the greater warmth of these months. In the winter, the typical maximum
weather is 16
C and a minimum of 3
C, while in summer, the temperature ranges
from 35 to 23
C. The annual high temperature recorded is 22.3
C, and the low tem-
perature is 11.1
C. The area receives the highest rainfall for the monsoon spell
between June to September every year and receives 1242.8 mm of average annual
rainfall. The wettest month, July, receives an average precipitation of 328.7 mm, fol-
lowed by August, which receives an average of 229.9 mm. From October to
December, there is a slight rainfall, with the lowermost average of 37.2 mm observed
in November.
6 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

The lithologies found in the region date back to the Precambrian age (Hussain et al.
2009). The fundamental lithologies are largely sedimentary or meta-sedimentary, contain-
ing schist, slate, shale, siltstone, sandstone, and limestone (Baig 2006; Hussain et al. 2009).
These lithologies have been fractured and joined by a number of faults (such as the MBT
and Panjal faults) and fold structures (such as the Hazara-Kashmir syntaxis), further weak-
ening their stability. The rugged terrain characterized by steep slopes, deeply incised val-
leys, and high-relief mountains has exacerbated these precarious geological states (Kamp
et al. 2008; Owen et al. 2008; Khan et al. 2019). The study area map is shown in Figure 1.

3. Materials and methods

As identified previously, the primary objective of this work is to check the applicability
and performance of SVM and ANN for evaluating the landslide susceptibility individu-
ally and when integrated with PSO. For this, 13 landslide conditioning parameters were
selected as the input data along with landslide inventory. A detailed outline of the
approach is given in Figure 2, and the different steps involved are as follows:

3.1. Landslide inventory and training and testing datasets

The first step in the research was to create the spatial distribution of landslide loca-
tions. A widespread assumption is that past, and present landslides are the basis for
all landslide prediction studies (Van Den Eeckhaut et al. 2006; Capitani et al. 2013).
In other words, a specific set of conditioning elements determines slope failures, and
future slope failures are predicted to occur under similar conditions. Consequently,
accurate recognition of the landslide locations is substantial for the probabilistic
investigation of landslide susceptibility (Pradhan et al. 2009; Pradhan 2010; Choi
et al. 2012; Umar et al. 2014).
In the current study, the past landslide locations were marked using the official his-
torical records and Landsat satellite images, which are available freely. The procedure
of change vector analysis for change detection, as explained in Aslam et al. (2022c),
was adopted to prepare the inventory. In order to determine the landslide distribution
in the region, a landslide inventory map was created. Both landslides, as well as non-
landslide locations, were exploited for applying machine learning (ML) techniques,
which is normal practice (Ballabio and Sterlacchini 2012; Chen et al. 2017a). Previous
606 landslide locations (the center points) were identified for the inventory and were
labeled as ‘1’. While other 606 non-landslide randomly selected center points were
labeled as ‘0’. In total, 1212 landslide points were used in the study. Furthermore, 1212
points of landslide inventory were split into 2/3 and 1/3 ratios for testing and training
the datasets. Thus, 67% of the data were randomly labeled as a training dataset, and
the rest of the 33% data was nominated as testing data.

3.2. Database of landslide-inducing factors

Although mapping of landslide susceptibility is still the center of attention of the
research community, there are no agreed procedures for the assortment of landslide-
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 7

Figure 1. Map of Pakistan with the study area highlighted in red and map showing the elevation,
fault lines, and waterways of the studied area.
inducing factors (Bui et al. 2016). However, it has been established by several
researchers (Saha et al. 2005; Owen et al. 2008; Khattak et al. 2010; Saba et al. 2010;
Pourghasemi et al. 2012; Kanwal et al. 2017; Ali et al. 2019; Rahman et al. 2022) that
landslides tend to occur where few conditions such as elevated mountains with
8 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

Figure 2. Methodological flowchart of the study showing all the important steps and sequence of
the work.

steeper slopes, high rainfall concentration, and seismicity are substantially found.
Therefore, the choice of landslide-inducing factors in this study was based on the pre-
viously conducted research and according to the topography of the considered area.
In total, 13 inducing factors, namely aspect, slope, elevation, curvature, lithology, flow
direction, fault density, road density, rainfall, earthquake intensity, waterways density,
Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and Normalized Difference Vegetation
Index (NDVI) were considered for the landslide susceptibility investigation.
The current study used the ASTER GDEM and Landsat-8 images with 30 m  30 m
resolution. These data sources are open-access, and data can be downloaded for free.
The five geomorphometric factors, elevation, aspect, slope, curvature, and flow direc-
tion, were extracted using DEM. NDVI and NDWI were taken out from Landsat 8
images acquired very recently. The infrared (IR) and red (R) bands were used to get
the NDVI by exploiting the following relation (Hong et al. 2016; Chen et al. 2018;
Yousefi et al. 2022b) in the raster calculator of ArcGIS:

IRR
NDVI ¼ (1)
IR þ R

Similar to NDVI, the NDWI was also obtained through the raster calculator of
ArcGIS but by using green (G) and near-infrared (NIR). The following relation (Du
et al. 2016) was used:

GNIR
NDWI ¼ (2)
G þ NIR

The geological maps of Pakistan were used for digitizing the layers like faults,
earthquake intensity, and lithology at a scale of 1:2,000,000. The thematic layers of
roads and waterways were digitized from the topographic maps of Pakistan. For the
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 9

polyline features such as faults, roads, and waterways, the line density was used to
calculate density in ArcGIS. The formulation of the rainfall layer was done by the sta-
tion data from Pakistan Meteorological Department. The average monthly data for
the last 21 years was used. The average yearly rainfall was calculated through the
below-stated formula using the available data source (Arnoldus 1980):
 
X
12 p2
1:5log pi 0:8188
P¼ 1:735  10 (3)
i¼1

where pi denotes the average rainfall of a month while p denotes the average yearly
rainfall.
Finally, all the thematic layers were standardized and normalized for further proc-
essing. For standardization, all three vector layers of landslide conditioning factors,
including point, polygon, and polyline with distinct resolutions, were transformed
with a resolution of 30 m  30 m into a raster format. Afterwards, the Natural breaks
(Jenks) classification technique was initially used to classify the thematic layers of all
the factors into five classes. Subsequently, for the normalization, all factors were fur-
ther reclassified into five categories (where 1 stand for very low susceptibility; 2
stands for low susceptibility; 3 stands for medium susceptibility; 4 stands for high
susceptibility, and 5 stands for very high susceptibility) dependent on the potential of
inducing landslide susceptibility.

3.3. Methods
The SVM and ANN models were trained using the training dataset. First, the models
were operated without any enhancement. Afterwards, the models were integrated
with PSO to enhance their functionality. During the training, the models examined
the factors, such as hydrological, topographical, lithological, etc., against the landslide
and non-landslide points. Then the trained model’s performance was evaluated on
the basis of the testing data set. Jupyter Notebook was used for the implementation
of the techniques used. The 10-fold cross-validation process was adopted in order to
reduce inconsistency and eliminate over-fitting. The models were fine-tuned to
enhance their accuracy and performance.
As a result, this process assisted in advising the importance of individual factors.
The final LSMs were then prepared in ArcGIS utilizing the weighted overlay analysis,
together with the thematic layers of the factors. Afterwards, LSMs were prepared and
were classified into five categories of susceptibility including very high; high; moder-
ate; low; and very low; using the Natural breaks (Jenks) classification technique.

3.3.1. Multicollinearity analysis

The correlation between considered landslide-inducing factors was assessed by multi-
collinearity analysis. This statistical analysis highlights the strong correlation among
two or more variables in a multiple regression model (O’brien 2007). The variance
inflation factor (VIF) and tolerance (TOL) were assessed to identify multicollinearity
among the causative components. The TOL value is the reciprocal of the VIF value.
10 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

The equation expressed below was used to calculate the VIF value:

1
VIF ¼ (4)
1  R2j

To understand the above equation, assume that X ¼ fX1, X2, … , XNg represents
the independent variables set, and the coefficient of determination is represented by
R2j : All the other variables in the regression model are regressed through the jth inde-
pendent variable Xj. The value of tolerance (TOL) indicates the correlation intensity
amongst the independent variables. A variable with a VIF value of greater than 10
and TOL value of less than 0.1 exhibits multicollinearity and should be eliminated
(Wang et al. 2019; Aslam et al. 2022b).

3.3.2. Swarm optimization (PSO)

PSO was proposed for the first time by Eberhart and Kennedy (1995). It is a vigorous
evolutionary algorithm that possesses a superior learning rate and requires less mem-
ory. These aspects demonstrate the extraordinary brilliance of the PSO, contrasted
with other optimization algorithms. Through the implementation of PSO, pbest, which
represents the most convenient personal, and gbest shows the best global positions, are
discovered by the particle activity. The following equation formulates the position of
particles:

X2 ¼ X1 þ V2 (5)

And the velocity of the particles is given by the subsequent equation:

V2 ¼ x  V1 þ C1  rðpbest  X1 Þ þ C2  r2 ðgbest  X1 Þ (6)

where, X1, X2, indicates the current and new position, V1 indicates the current and
V2 indicates new velocity of each particle. x signifies the inertia weight. Moreover, C1
and C2 represent two constant and positive acceleration rates that are chosen by the
user. Furthermore, the terms r1 and r2 signify arbitrary values, which can be specified
by the form of (0,1).

3.3.3. Support vector machine (SVM)

The most popular ML approach and most effective classifier used for supervised
learning are the SVM, which was initially proposed by Vapnik (1999). The simple
concept of SVM is based on the statistical learning theory (Cortes and Vapnik 1995).
The advantage of using high dimensional and linearly non-separable datasets is why
SVM is used widely in diverse classifications and regression problems (Mountrakis
et al. 2011; Kavzoglu et al. 2014) comprising the landslide susceptibility prediction
based on a set of input data (Gleason and Im 2012).
SVM defines the margin of the hyperplane by using support vectors. Centered on
the statistical methodology, SVM can distinguish the optimum hyperplane for differ-
entiating two classes (Kavzoglu et al. 2014; Pham et al. 2016). Suppose that the vector
of landslide conditioning factors is X ¼ x1, x2, … , xn, and the vector of classified
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 11

variables (non-landslide and landslide) is represented by Y. The optimum distinguish-

ing hyperplane can be established by resolving the subsequent classification function:
" #
X
n
F ðX Þ ¼ sin ai Yg ðxi Þ þ c (7)
i¼1

where, ai is constant, c signifies the offset from the origin of the hyperplane, n repre-
sents the total number of conditioning factors and g ðxi Þ is the kernel function. In the
present study, the kernel function used is the Gaussian Radial basis function. Aimed at
a binary classification problem such as the present problem of landslide involving non-
landslide and landslide points, the constraint condition for solving the equation is:
 
Y W T hðX Þ þ c  1 (8)

where W T hðX Þ þ c  1 if Y ¼ þ1 and W T hðX Þ þ c < 1 if Y ¼ 1. In the above con-

dition, W is the weighting factor, and h(X) structures a non-linear function that sepa-
rates the input space from high-dimension spaces.

3.3.4. Artificial neural network (ANN)

Modern times have observed the usage of computational intelligence, particularly
ANN, for resolving numerous problems. ANN is encouraged by the human neural
network and is trained to ascertain the non-linear comparisons amongst a set of
input–output data (Wang 2003). Compared with statistical techniques, the extraordin-
ary benefit of ANN is its implementation efficiency. To put it in another way, the
numerical data is not required to be categorized for use in ANN. Multilayer percep-
tron (MLP) is the most commonly used and robust type of ANN. MLP is highly per-
tinent in modeling functional relations (G€
unther and Fritsch 2010).
MLP is based on three layers, specifically the input, hidden, and output layers,
including the computational nodes. The working of MLP is represented in graphical
form in Figure 3. In general, MLP establishes the influence of every landslide condi-
tioning factor by allocating weights and biases. In the input layer, let X be the input
parameter. In the hidden layer, the weight (W) is multiplied by the input parameter,
and then the bias (b) is added. In the end, in the output layer, an activation function
(f(x)) is employed to the gained value to generate the local output. Mathematically,
the following equation supports the representation of MLP:
!
Xn
Y ¼ ðf ðxÞÞ Xi W i þ b (9)
i¼1

In the present study, the chosen (f(x)) is the Tan-sigmoid (Tansig) activation func-
tion because of its solid performance in preceding analyses (Seyedashraf et al. 2018;
Xi et al. 2019). This relation is expressed in the following equation:

2
Tansig ðxÞ ¼ 1 (10)
1 þ e2x
12 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

Figure 3. The general structure showing different kinds of layers and learning mechanism of ANN
as an MLP.

3.4. Model evaluation

To assess the performance of the suggested model framework, measurements of the
Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve were used. The ROC curve is a typical
method for the assessment of the performance of prediction techniques adopted by
Bradley (1997). It is generated by mapping the true positive (true prediction made by
the model) rate against the false positive (false prediction made by the model) rate at
several threshold values. In statistics, the true positive and false positive rates are also
mentioned as sensitivity and 100-specificity. Additionally, the Area under the Curve
(AUC) measure has been utilized broadly to quantitatively assess the performance of
various techniques in the context of landslide susceptibility mapping (Tsangaratos
and Ilia 2016; Pham et al. 2017; Chen et al. 2017b, 2017c; Qi et al. 2021). In particu-
lar, a prediction approach is believed to be excellent if the AUC value is near 1
(Tsangaratos and Ilia 2016; Zhu et al. 2018).

4. Results
4.1. Outcomes of multicollinearity analysis
Table 1 describes the outcomes of the multicollinearity analysis of landslide-inducing
factors. None of the factors was removed from the further analysis as it was found
that none of the variables had a VIF value greater than 10, the threshold value.
Therefore, there is no need to remove any of the factors from further analysis.

4.2. Thematic layers of inducing factors

The aspect of the study area was found to have 9 orientations: Flat, West, Northwest,
North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, and Southwest. A substantial portion of the
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 13

area has Northern and Southward orientations, as can be seen from Figure 4a. It is
primarily the elevated mountain slopes of the area that are directed toward the North
and South sides. Moreover, the elevation in the area varies from 574 to 4438 m. It
can be observed from Figure 4b that the Northeast side has a high elevation while
the southwest side has a lower elevation.
The curvature map of the considered area represented in Figure 4c illustrates the
geomorphological characteristic of the area by offering information about the diver-
gent/convergent or accelerated/decelerated character of the flow. The positive values
show the concave/divergent surfaces, and the negative values reflect the convex/con-
vergent character of the surface of the study area. The convexity/convergence (accel-
erated flow) or concavity/divergence (decelerated flow) of the surface greatly
influences the moisture-holding capacity of the soil.
The angles of the slopes in the area show that the area is dominated by steeper
slopes which usually have a greater chance of sliding than mild slopes. The steeper
slopes are mostly centered on the Southeastern part of the area, which also has a
higher elevation than the rest of the area, as can be perceived from Figure 4d.
Furthermore, the flow direction map represented in Figure 4e shows that the flow is
from North to South, which is typical in mountainous regions. There is more cutting
of slopes on the way to Southward flow, therefore, resulting in higher landslide
susceptibility.
Since the considered area has experienced large-magnitude earthquakes, the earth-
quake intensity is comparatively high in this area. The Northern portion of the
selected area has high seismicity and thus has high susceptibility. The Southern por-
tion has relatively moderate seismicity, as evident from Figure 4f. Moreover, higher
soil moisture is much more responsible for destabilizing the slopes as compared to
less moisture soil. Thus, the NDWI is crucial. Most of the regions having high
NDWI are on the Northeast and Southeast side, as can be seen in Figure 4g. The pos-
sible reason for high NDWI on these sides can be the snow on elevated mountains.
However, some central regions also have high NDWI, which is basically due to the
tributaries and rivers in the area.
In contrast to the NDWI, the high NDVI is primarily centered in the Northwest
and Southwest direction, which is the low-lying area. Overall, the NDVI for most of

Table 1. Multicollinearity analysis of landslide inducing factors.

Statistics
Factors TOL VIF
Aspect 0.201 4.97
Curvature 0.887 1.12
Earthquake intensity 0.817 1.22
Elevation 0.647 1.54
Flow direction 0.728 1.37
Lithology 0.652 1.53
NDVI 0.521 1.91
NDWI 0.678 1.47
Rainfall 0.718 1.39
Slope 0.23 4.34
Fault density 0.241 4.14
Road density 0.168 5.95
Waterways density 0.386 2.59
14 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

Figure 4. Thematic layers of landslide inducing factors used in this study: aspect (a), elevation (b),
curvature (c), slope (d), flow direction (e), earthquake intensity (f), NDWI (g), NDVI (h), rainfall (i),
lithology (j), waterways density (k), roads density (l), fault density (m). The layers are overlaid on
hillshade using 30% transparency.
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 15

Figure 4. Continued

the area is high, as can be seen in Figure 4h. The area’s high NDVI concentration is
compatible with the dense vegetation seen in the hilly areas.
Higher vegetation cover on slopes leads to a reduction in slope failure and soil ero-
sion. Contrary to this, no vegetation enhances the chances of failure as the surface is
open. This was applied to the re-classification procedure of NDVI. Moreover, Figure 4i
(rainfall map) shows that the rainfall in the studied area varies between 983 and
1324 mm and increases gradually from North to South. Normally, as compared to
the lower level of rainfall, a higher level of rainfall has more potential to trigger
landslides.
The study area is composed of diverse lithology. Limestone covers the larger part
of the area, as shown in Figure 4j. Other protruding lithologies are slate, volcanic
rock, and quartzite. Examples of weak lithologies are limestone and slate, which cover
16 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

most of the area. The waterways in the area cover almost all of the area. Several small
tributaries drain into the main river, which runs from North to South, as seen in
Figure 4k. Normally, the areas nearer to the waterways possess higher landslide sus-
ceptibility because of the cutting of slopes and moisture. At the same time, with the
increase in distance, susceptibility decreases.
The road network in the area is mainly centered in areas with low elevation and
less steep slopes, as can be observed from Figure 4l. In mountainous areas like the
one selected for the study purpose, usually, the slopes are unstable because of the cut-
ting of toes of the slopes for the construction of the roads. Therefore, similar to
waterways, susceptibility decreases with the increase in remoteness from the roads,
whereas the areas closer to the roads are more prone to landslides. Additionally, as
already shown in the earthquake intensity map, the region has high seismicity because
two important fault lines traverse the region. These faults run from North to South
along the East and West margins, as shown in Figure 4m. Like waterways and roads,
the areas closer to the faults have a greater landslide susceptibility, while the suscepti-
bility decreases with the increase in remoteness from the faults.

4.3. The relative importance of inducing factors

From Table 2, it can be observed that the significance of landslide-inducing factors is
the same for all the models, with slight differences. It is also important to note that
the influence of the similar controlling element varies in accordance with the distinct
models. Some of the landslide-inducing factors, NDWI, flow direction, lithology, rain-
fall, elevation, and slope, have a higher effect on the models, whereas the remaining
factors cause less effect.

4.4. Landslide susceptibility maps (LSMs)

After applying the SVM model, the resulting landslide susceptibility map (Figure 5a)
shows that 23% of the area has low and 3.9% of the area has very low susceptibility.
These regions are primarily situated on the Northeast and Southeast sides of the dis-
trict. The area falling under the moderate susceptibility class covers 43.1%, and

Table 2. Obtained relative importance of landslide inducing factors from different models.
Factors SVM ANN PSO–SVM PSO–ANN
Aspect 7 9 6 5
Curvature 10 6 9 11
Earthquake intensity 5 7 4 6
Elevation 11 9 12 13
Flow direction 8 9 11 9
Lithology 9 10 11 9
NDVI 7 6 6 8
NDWI 10 9 9 11
Rainfall 11 12 10 9
Slope 10 13 10 11
Fault density 5 4 6 3
Road density 4 3 3 3
Waterways density 3 3 3 2
Total 100 100 100 100
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 17

Figure 5. Formulated landslide susceptibility maps using SVM (a), ANN (b), SVM-PSO (c), and ANN-
PSO (d) models.

23.32% of the total area has high susceptibility, as listed in Table 3. At the same time,
6.75% of the total area represents very high susceptibility and is mainly found in the
West and Southwest of the district. The resulting landslide susceptibility map from
the ANN model (Figure 5b and Table 3) portrays that 3.2% of the area lies in the
very low susceptibility class, and 23.9% of the area is covered by the low susceptibility
class. However, moderate susceptibility covers an area of 42.1%.
Furthermore, 23.6% of the total area comes under the high, and the very high sus-
ceptibility class covers 7.2% of the total area. These regions are primarily positioned
18 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

in the West and Southwest of the district, just like the dissemination in the LSM by
SVM. The produced LSMs have very comparable distributions and proportions of
respective susceptibility classes for both SVM and ANN models. Additionally, the
LSM produced as a result of the integrated modeling of PSO–SVM shows that an
area of 6.8% falls under the very high moderate susceptibility class (Figure 5c and
Table 3), which is slightly lower than the results of ANN but is similar to the results
of SVM. Furthermore, PSO–SVM based LSM shows a very comparable trend to
SVMM and ANN for the rest of the susceptibility classes.
Interestingly, the LSM produced after the integrated modeling through PSO–ANN
shows that 6.8% of the area has high susceptibility (Figure 5d and Table 3), which is
slightly lower than the results of the ANN model but is the same as the results of the
SVM, and PSO–SVM models. The percentage of area for other susceptibility classes is
again very similar to the rest of LSMs. For all of the LSMs, the areas having high and
very high susceptibility are generally located towards the West and Southwest of the dis-
trict. This is considering the variation of inducing factors and their importance. It can

Table 3. Area division of landslide susceptibility types generated from different models.
Susceptible type
Models Units Very low Low Moderate High Very high
SVM Sqm 807 4753 8912 4792 1401
Pct 3.9 23.0 43.1 23.2 6.8
ANN Sqm 663 4943 8694 4887 1478
Pct 3.2 23.9 42.1 23.6 7.2
PSO-SVM Sqm 756 4833 8827 4854 1395
Pct 3.7 23.4 42.7 23.5 6.8
PSO-ANN Sqm 799 4783 8898 4802 1403
Pct 3.9 23.1 43.1 23.2 6.8

Figure 6. The ROC curves of the used models obtained for the testing dataset.
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 19

be observed that the West and Southwest of the district are low elevated, has lower slope
angles, higher flow direction, higher NDWI, relatively high rainfall intensity, and lime-
stone as the lithological unit. Moreover, in accordance with the results, the area falling
under different susceptibility classes is also very similar.

4.5. Accuracy assessment

The accuracy assessment results are depicted in Figure 6. The ANN model with 0.81
AUC outperformed the SVM model having an AUC of 0.78 when used for modeling
without the optimization. Moreover, a similar trend of model performances was
observed with the optimization, with the only difference that the accuracies were
enhanced. When integrated with PSO, the ANN model obtained an AUC of 0.87,
whereas the AUC of the SVM model during the integration with PSO stood at 0.84.

5. Discussion
In this work, the Muzaffarabad district’s landslide susceptibility was mapped using an
integrated technique, which produced the landslide susceptibility maps (LSMs). The
approach involves a well-known optimization technique: PSO, and two state-of-the-art
Machine Learning techniques: SVM and ANN.
A precise landslide inventory map is required as a key step for performing such
modeling and accurate analysis. Satellite imageries are the most reliable data source
for detecting landslides and preparing inventory maps (D - uric et al. 2017;
Ghorbanzadeh et al. 2022). The imageries from Landsat are also used to prepare a
landslide inventory map in this study. Moreover, selecting inducing factors is critical
in landslide susceptibility mapping (Hong et al. 2018; Shu et al. 2021; Li et al. 2022).
There is not a single method that is universally acknowledged for choosing the com-
ponents that cause landslides, although most of them are based on the area’s geo-
graphical characteristics and landslide literature. On the basis of previous literature
and topographical and geographical settings of the region, 13 landslide-inducing fac-
tors were chosen for plotting the landslide susceptibility (Saha et al. 2005; Owen et al.
2008; Khattak et al. 2010; Saba et al. 2010; Pourghasemi et al. 2012; Kanwal et al.
2017; Ali et al. 2019).
Afterwards, the considered factors were attained from relevant data sources and
used along with the landslide inventory for further analysis. As multiple landslide-
inducing factors were used in this study, the correlation between them was assessed
utilizing the multicollinearity analysis. The outcomes of the analysis showed no col-
linearity among the considered factors (Table 1).
The data were divided into testing and training data with a proportion of 67 and
33%, respectively. The training data was used to construct the models with 10-fold
cross-validation, and testing data was used to check the functionality of the trained
models. The models’ processing resulted in advising weights for the inducing factors.
Finally, the LSMs were produced in ArcGIS using the weights of the conditioning fac-
tors found from the models.
20 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

According to the produced LSMs, the high and very high susceptibility classes are
centered in the West and Southwest of the district (Figure 5). These regions have
lower elevations, less steep slopes, higher rainfall volumes, NDWI, and flow direction.
Even though normally, the regions with higher elevation tend to have more suscepti-
bility, as established in previous studies, the results of this study, however, show that
the regions having relatively low elevation than the rest of the area have higher sus-
ceptibility (Figure 4b). The possible reason behind this is that the low elevated
regions are the floodplains of the main river in the area, and the huge water flows
make the slopes unstable. This can also be justified by the previous studies that land-
slides were possibly debris flow because most of them occurred along the rivers. Due
to this reason, the models have forecasted that lower elevation areas are highly sus-
ceptible. The other possible reason can be the disturbance to the natural settings due
to human activities in lower elevated regions (Pradhan and Kim 2014; Dragicevic
et al. 2015).
The slope angles of most landslide-susceptible regions are between 0
and 23
, and
rarely the susceptibility is high in areas where the slope is too sharp (Figure 4d).
There is nearly no shallow landslide on the slope, which is too steep due to the thin
soil layer (Chen et al. 2021a). Additionally, the regions with lower slope angles are
more influenced by anthropogenic activities, which makes the slopes unstable.
Anthropogenic activities greatly influence an area’s inherent topography, which has
consequences. With time, the risk of landslides has grown because of the increase in
deforestation rates, rising population density, and unrestrained urbanization (Flentje
and Chowdhury 2018; Froude and Petley 2018; Bragagnolo et al. 2020).
Furthermore, flow direction, rainfall, and NDWI are linked to water content and
have been ranked among the most substantial inducing factors. Rainfall is related
strongly to very high landslide susceptibility in the area, which is very pragmatic as
the area receives significant rainfall over a year, varying from 983 to 1323 mm at dif-
ferent places (Figure 4i). The degree of saturation of the soil increases because of the
rapid infiltration of water in the soil due to heavy rainfall (Mandal and Mandal 2018;
Maqsoom et al. 2020). When the moisture upsurges, the slope material becomes
loose, and the risk of sliding increases.
The flow direction was also found to be very crucial related to the landslide sus-
ceptibility, possibly owing to the topography and water regime of the area. The flow
direction in the area is from North to South, as indicated by the major rivers in the
area (Figure 4e). While flowing from North to south, the cutting of slopes due to
huge flow always causes debris flow (Ballabio and Sterlacchini 2012; Rahim et al.
2018). The considered area in this research has experienced a huge number of land-
slides positioned near the rivers and debris flow (Saba et al. 2010). Moreover, the

Table 4. Outcomes of accuracy assessment of the generated maps from

different models.
Models Accuracy (%)
SVM 80
ANN 82
PSO–SVM 86
PSO–ANN 89
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 21

NDWI is used to calculate moisture growth at a particular location (Rahim et al.

2018). Higher soil moisture creates higher landslide susceptibility than lower moisture
levels (Yang et al. 2017; Aslam et al. 2022c).
Table 3 provides a detailed depiction by comparing the results of different areas fall-
ing under different classes of susceptibility of LSMs. The comparison shows that all the
models showed a similar trend in terms of area under different susceptibility classes
with slight variations. However, for all of the models, the maximum area (around 8850
Sqm) has moderate susceptibility, and around 6100 Sqm area has high to very high sus-
ceptibility. Additionally, the assessment results proved that the PSO–ANN model has
better accuracy (AUC ¼ 0.87) than PSO–SVM (AUC ¼ 0.84). ANN (AUC ¼ 0.81) also
performed better than SVM (AUC ¼ 0.78) without the optimization. The results lead to
the conclusion that the optimization improved the accuracy of both ANN and SVM.
Aslam et al. (2021) in their study integrated CNN with multiple ML techniques,
including SVM, and found that SVM outperformed other techniques with (AUC ¼
0.87) and without (AUC ¼ 0.86) integration. The integration of SVM with CNN
showed a noticeable improvement in accuracy. The accuracy of SVM in this study is
less than the accuracy of SVM in the Aslam et al. (2021)study, and the reason is that
they used a bigger area (combination of two Muzaffarabad and Nowshera districts)
and also the choice of their inducing factors was different. Also, another possible rea-
son for the low accuracy of SVM in this study as compared to Aslam et al. (2021) is
that in this study, the kernel function used for the implementation of SVM is the
Gaussian Radial basis function whereas they have used the Radial basis function.
Moreover, another potential reason can be that Aslam et al. (2021) used a cross-fold
validation process for the implementation of the models; however, in this study, the
hold-out implementation process is used. Also, Aslam et al. (2022a), when comparing
the performance of different conventional and unconventional ML techniques, includ-
ing ANN, observed that the ANN (AUC ¼ 0.92) outperformed the other techniques.
The accuracy of the ANN is very high than the accuracy of the ANN with and with-
out the optimization in this study. However, again the reasons for the difference are
very comparable to the reasons mentioned previously. The neural network used in
this study and in Aslam et al. (2022a) is the same, which is MLP. The differences are
the targeted area and a different implementation method, that is, hold-out.
Further, Xi et al. (2019) assessed the efficiency of PSO for improving the perform-
ance of the ANN for plotting landslide susceptibility and found that the performance
of ANN experiences a substantial increase when optimized with PSO. The AUC of
ANN increased from 0.77 to 0.83 for the validation dataset. Similarly, in this study,
PSO also enhanced the accuracy of ANN from 0.81 to 0.87, which is a very signifi-
cant increase. Moreover, Zhao and Zhao (2021), when combined PSO with SVM to
prepare landslide susceptibility maps, also found an increase in the accuracy of the
SVM. Based on the slope units, the accuracy of SVM (AUC ¼ 0.85) improved con-
siderably when optimized with PSO (AUC ¼ 0.95). In these previously mentioned
two studies, the performance of SVM and ANN improved considerably after the opti-
mization with PSO, which resembles the outcomes of this study.
Moreover, the produced LSMs were assessed for their accuracy using the historical
landslide locations. For the accuracy assessment, a correlation was calculated between
22 M. U. BASHARAT ET AL.

the LSMs and the landslide locations. The results showed acceptable conformity for
PSO–SVM, and PSO–ANN, with PSO–ANN performing better (89%) than the rest,
as listed in Table 4. However, the ANN model-based LSM outperformed (82%) the
SVM model for individual models. Thus, it can be concluded that the accuracy of an
LSM is dependent on the assessment model and the inducing factors used for a given
area.

6. Conclusion
Several techniques have been created and utilized to map landslide susceptibility,
both individually and in an integrated manner where one technique is amalgamated
with another technique. All of these techniques differ from one another based on
their effectiveness. Whereas, in this study, to evaluate the landslide susceptibility of
Muzaffarabad district, two state-of-the-art techniques, that is, SVM and ANN, are
adopted to compare the results for two scenarios. In the first scenario, these methods
were used alone; for the second scenario, they were integrated with a state-of-the-art
optimization technique of PSO. Based on the landslide phenomenon-related know-
ledge and the characteristics of the considered area, 13 inducing factors, namely slope,
fault density, curvature, elevation, road density, lithology, earthquake intensity, curva-
ture, waterways density, flow direction, NDWI, rainfall, and NDVI were selected in
this study. The outcomes of multicollinearity showed that there is no collinearity pre-
sent among the considered factors. A landslide inventory containing 1212 landslide
points (including 606 landslide points and the same amount of non-landslide points)
was used. Out of the 1212 points, 67% were used as training and 33% as testing data-
sets. The models were built based on the training data and were validated using the
testing data.
The models in both scenarios ranked NDWI, lithology, slope, flow direction, rain-
fall, and elevation as the most important landslide-inducing factors. However, their
weights varied for every model. The resulting LSMs from every model revealed that
almost 30% of the area is subjected to high to very high susceptibility, while approxi-
mately 40% has moderate susceptibility. The areas having high susceptibility are
mainly on the Southwestern side, while the low and moderate susceptibility areas are
mainly on the Northeastern side of the district. Considering the outcomes of this
study relative to the referred literature, the performance of all the models used in this
study was fairly decent. The accuracy assessment revealed that the performance of the
ANN model was relatively greater than the SVM model with (AUC ¼ 0.87) and with-
out (AUC ¼ 0.81) the PSO optimization. Moreover, the results of the accuracy assess-
ment of the produced LSMs also showed that the PSO–ANN model-produced map
had the highest accuracy (89%). Followingly it was the PSO–SVM models’ LSM with
an accuracy of 86%. The accuracy of SVM and ANN-produced LSMs are 82%, and
80% respectively. Thus, this study establishes the fact that integrated techniques can
result in more efficient results than the individual models.
This study was limited to the integration of conventional techniques, that is, ANN
and SVM with optimization technique PSO only. Nevertheless, as mentioned above,
this study yielded better results as compared to the previous literature. Future studies
 GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK 23

can consider applying the used integrated techniques in different regions having simi-
lar or different topographical and environmental settings as of the area focused in
this study for landslide susceptibility mapping. Also, the conventional techniques
used in this study can be integrated with other optimization techniques such as Grey
Wolf and Firefly for better results. Lastly, the LSMs produced in this study can help
mitigate the damaging effects of this natural hazard by delineating the spatial distri-
bution of potential landslide risk areas in the studied area. This makes it easier for
the authorities to undertake necessary measures in a localized manner.

Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the editor and reviewers for their kind feedback. Authors are
thankful to HITEC University for its support in completing this research.

Authors’ Contributions
MB and JAK: Methodology, MB and JAK: Software, MB and JAK: Formal analysis and investi-
gation. MB and JAK: visualization, MB, JAK, HGA and HA: Writing—original draft prepar-
ation, MB, JAK, HGA and HA: Writing—review and editing, MB, JAK, HGA and HA:
Supervision. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure Statement
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by
any of the authors.

Availability of Data
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the correspond-
ing author.

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