A comparative study of slope failure prediction using logistic regression, support vector machine and least square support vector machine models

A comparative study of logistic regression, support vector machine (SVM) and least square support vector machine (LSSVM) models has been done to predict the slope failure (landslide) along East-West Highway (Gerik-Jeli). The effects of two monsoon seasons (southwest and northeast) that occur in Malaysia are considered in this study. Two related factors of occurrence of slope failure are included in this study: rainfall and underground water. For each method, two predictive models are constructed, namely SOUTHWEST and NORTHEAST models. Based on the results obtained from logistic regression models, two factors (rainfall and underground water level) contribute to the occurrence of slope failure. The accuracies of the three statistical models for two monsoon seasons are verified by using Relative Operating Characteristics curves. The validation results showed that all models produced prediction of high accuracy. For the results of SVM and LSSVM, the models using RBF kernel showed better prediction compared to the models using linear kernel. The comparative results showed that, for SOUTHWEST models, three statistical models have relatively similar performance. For NORTHEAST models, logistic regression has the best predictive efficiency whereas the SVM model has the second best predictive efficiency.