Flash-flood propagation susceptibility estimation using weights of evidence and their novel ensembles with multicriteria decision making and machine learning

Abstract

The present study aims to enrich the specialized literature by proposing and calculating a new flash-flood propagation susceptibility index (FFPSI). Thus, firstly the Flash-Flood Potential Index (FFPI) using the ensembles of the next models was calculated: Weights of Evidence (WOE), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Logistic Regression (LR), Classification and Regression Trees (CART), and Radial Basis Function Neural Network-Weights of Evidence (RBFN-WOE). A number of 255 flash-flood locations, split into training (70%) and validating (30%) samples, along with 10 predictors were used as input in the five models. The Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) Curve and several statistical metrics were used to evaluate the Flash-Flood Potential Index results. LR-WOE and AHP-WOE were the most performant models. Nevertheless, all the applied models performed very well (AUC > 0.85). Further, the FFPSI was determined by integrating the FFPI results into a Flow Accumulation procedure. Over 55% of the valleys identified are characterized by high and very high values of FFPSI.

Graphical abstract

Keywords:

• Flash-floods propagation susceptibility
• bivariate statistics
• multicriteria decision-making
• machine learning
• Romania

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-PD-2019-0424-P, within PNCDI III.