Landslide Susceptibility Research Combining Qualitative Analysis and Quantitative Evaluation: A Case Study of Yunyang County in Chongqing, China

Machine Learning Model Development to Predict Power Outage Duration (POD): A Case Study for Electric Utilities

In the face of increasing climate variability and the complexities of modern power grids, managing power outages in electric utilities has emerged as a critical challenge. This paper introduces a novel predictive model employing machine learning algorithms, including decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), k-nearest neighbors (KNN), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost). Leveraging historical sensors-based and non-sensors-based outage data from a Turkish electric utility company, the model demonstrates adaptability to diverse grid structures, considers meteorological and non-meteorological outage causes, and provides real-time feedback to customers to effectively address the problem of power outage duration. Using the XGBoost algorithm with the minimum redundancy maximum relevance (MRMR) feature selection attained 98.433% accuracy in predicting outage durations, better than the state-of-the-art methods showing 85.511% accuracy on average over various datasets, a 12.922% improvement. This paper contributes a practical solution to enhance outage management and customer communication, showcasing the potential of machine learning to transform electric utility responses and improve grid resilience and reliability.

Geological Hazard Susceptibility Analysis and Developmental Characteristics Based on Slope Unit, Using the Xinxian County, Henan Province as an Example

Geological hazards in Xinxian County, Xinyang City, Henan Province, are characterized by their small scale, wide distribution, and significant influence from regional tectonics. This study focuses on collapses and landslide hazards within the area, selecting twelve evaluation factors: aspect, slope shape, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), topographic relief, distance from geological structure, slope, distance from roads, land use cover type, area of land change (2012-2022), average annual rainfall (2012-2022), and river network density. Utilizing data from historical disaster sites across the region, the information quantity method and hierarchical analysis method are employed to ascertain the information quantity and weight of each factor. Subsequently, a random forest model is applied to perform susceptibility zoning of geological hazards in Xinxian County and to examine the characteristics of these geological disasters. The results show that in the study area, the primary factors influencing the development of geohazards are the distance from roads, rock groups, and distance from geological structure areas. A comparison of the susceptibility results obtained through two methods, the analytic hierarchy process information quantity method and the random forests model, reveals that the former exhibits a higher accuracy. This model categorizes the geohazard susceptibility in the study area into four levels: low, medium, high, and very high. Notably, the areas of very high and high susceptibility together cover 559.17 km2, constituting 35.99% of the study area's total area, and encompass 57 disaster sites, which represent 72.15% of all disaster sites. Geological hazards in Xinxian County frequently manifest on steep canyon inclines, along the curved and concave banks of mountain rivers, within watershed regions, on gully inclines, atop steep cliffs, and on artificially created slopes, among other sites. Areas with very high and high vulnerability to these hazards are mainly concentrated near the county's geological formations. The gneiss formations are widely exposed in Xinxian County, and the gneisses' strength is significantly changed under weathering, which makes the properties of the different degrees of weathering of the rock and soil bodies play a decisive role in the stability of the slopes. This paper provides a basis for evaluating and preventing geologic hazards in the Dabie mountainous area of the South Henan Province, and the spatial planning of the national territory.

GIS-based data-driven bivariate statistical models for landslide susceptibility prediction in Upper Tista Basin, India

Predicting landslides is becoming a crucial global challenge for sustainable development in mountainous areas. This research compares the landslide susceptibility maps (LSMs) prepared from five GIS-based data-driven bivariate statistical models, namely, (a) Frequency Ratio (FR), (b) Index of Entropy (IOE), (c) Statistical Index (SI), (d) Modified Information Value Model (MIV) and (e) Evidential Belief Function (EBF). These five models were tested in the high landslides-prone humid sub-tropical type Upper Tista basin of the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya by integrating the GIS and remote sensing. The landslide inventory map consisting of 477 landslide locations was prepared, and about 70% of all landslide data was utilized for training the model, and 30% was used to validate it after training. A total of fourteen landslide triggering parameters (elevation, slope, aspect, curvature, roughness, stream power index, TWI, distance to stream, distance to road, NDVI, LULC, rainfall, modified fournier index, and lithology) were taken into consideration for preparing the LSMs. The multicollinearity statistics revealed no collinearity problem among the fourteen causative factors used in this study. Based on the FR, MIV, IOE, SI, and EBF approaches, 12.00%, 21.46%, 28.53%, 31.42%, and 14.17% areas, respectively, identified in the high and very high landslide-prone zones. The research also revealed that the IOE model has the highest training accuracy of 95.80%, followed by SI (92.60%), MIV (92.20%), FR (91.50%), and EBF (89.90%) models. Consistent with the actual distribution of landslides, the very high, high, and medium hazardous zones stretch along the Tista River and major roads. The suggested landslide susceptibility models have enough accuracy for usage in landslide mitigation and long-term land use planning in the study area. Decision-makers and local planners may utilise the study's findings. The techniques for determining landslide susceptibility can also be employed in other Himalayan regions to manage and evaluate landslide hazards.

Spatial Analysis on the Variances of Landslide Factors Using Geographically Weighted Logistic Regression in Penang Island, Malaysia

Landslides are one of the common natural disasters involving mostly movement of soil surfaces associated with gravitational attraction. Their adverse losses and significant damage, which always result in at least 17% of casualties and billions of dollars of financial losses worldwide, have made landslides the third most notorious phenomenon devastating many parts of the world. Malaysia has had multiple landslide occurrences, particularly in highly urbanized areas, such as Penang Island, owing to the declining vegetation cover in hilly terrains. Thus, this study aims to delineate the spatial relationship variances between landslide occurrences and the influencing factors in the area of interest. Ten influencing factors considered, including distance to roads, distance to rivers, distance to faults, slope angle, slope aspect, curvature, rainfall annual average, lithology, soil series, and land use. In this study, we use a software (GWR 4.0) as a medium for the analysis processing, coupled with GIS. A local statistical technique, Geographically Weighted Logistic Regression (GWLR), is primacy in capturing the geographical variation of the model coefficients that considers non-stationary variables and models their relationships, as well as processes regression coefficients over space. Goodness-of-fit criteria were used to evaluate the GWLR model, namely AICc that decrease from 872.202167 to 800.856998. Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) shows a decrease in value from 925.784185 to 945.196942. Likewise, deviance decreased from 849.931675 to 739.175630, while pdev increased from 0.379457 to 0.460321. These goodness-of-fit criteria values express GWLR as the best model for local measure. The variances in both local parameter estimates and the t-values (negative and positive values) show the level of significance for each landslide factor in influencing landslide occurrences across the study area. The results of the local parameter estimates and the t-values also show that the slope angle and the slope aspect spatially affect landslide occurrences across the study area. Therefore, a proper perspective and a thorough understanding of the certain slope condition must be established for future mitigation actions to support the agenda of SDG 15, which promotes resilience and disaster risk reduction.