Efficiency evaluation of low impact development practices on urban flood risk.

Urban flood risk assessment delivers invaluable information regarding flood management as well as preventing the associated risks in urban areas. The present study prepares a flood risk map and evaluate the practices of low-impact development (LID) intended to decrease the flood risk in Shiraz Municipal District 4, Fars province, Iran. So, this study investigate flood vulnerability using MCDM models and some indices, including population density, building age, socio-economic conditions, floor area ratio, literacy, the elderly population, and the number of building floors to. Then, the map of thematic layers affecting the urban flood hazard, including annual mean rainfall, land use, elevation, slope percentage, curve number, distance from channel, depth of groundwater, and channel density, was prepared in GIS. After conducting a multicollinearity test, data mining models were used to create the urban flood hazard map, and the urban flood risk map was produced using ArcGIS 10.8. The evaluation of vulnerability models was shown through the use of Boolean logic that TOPSIS and VIKOR models were effective in identifying urban flooding vulnerable areas. Data mining models were also evaluated using ROC and precision-recall curves, indicating the accuracy of the RF model. The importance of input variables was measured using Shapley value, which showed that curve number, land use, and elevation were more important in flood hazard modeling. According to the results, 37.8 percent of the area falls into high and very high categories in terms of flooding risk. The study used a stormwater management model (SWMM) to simulate node flooding and provide management scenarios for rainfall events with a return period ranging from 2 to 50 years and five rainstorm events. The use of LID practices in flood management was found to be effective for rainfall events with a return period of less than 10 years, particularly for two-year events. However, the effectiveness of LID practices decreases with an increase in the return period. By applying a combined approach to a region covering approximately 10 percent of the total area of Shiraz Municipal District 4, a reduction of 2-22.8 percent in node flooding was achieved. The analysis of data mining and MCDM models with a physical model revealed that more than 60% of flooded nodes were classified as "high" and "very high" risk categories in the RF-VIKOR and RF-TOPSIS risk models.

Using machine learning to predict processes and morphometric features of watershed.

The research aims to classify alluvial fans' morphometric properties using the SOM algorithm. It also determines the relationship between morphometric characteristics and erosion rate and lithology using the GMDH algorithm. For this purpose, alluvial fans of 4 watersheds in Iran are extracted semi-automatically using GIS and digital elevation model (DEM) analysis. The relationships between 25 morphometric features of these watersheds, the amount of erosion, and formation material are investigated using the self-organizing map (SOM) method. Principal component analysis (PCA), Greedy, Best first, Genetic search, Random search as feature selection algorithms are used to select the most important parameters affecting erosion and formation material. The group method of data handling (GMDH) algorithm is employed to predict erosion and formation material based on morphometries. The results indicated that the semi-automatic method in GIS could detect alluvial fans. The SOM algorithm determined that the morphometric factors affecting the formation material were fan length, minimum height of fan, and minimum fan slope. The main factors affecting erosion were fan area (Af) and minimum fan height (Hmin-f). The feature selection algorithm identified (Hmin-f), maximum fan height (Hmax-f), minimum fan slope, and fan length (Lf) to be the morphometries most important for determining formation material, and basin area, fan area, (Hmax-f) and compactness coefficient (Cirb) were the most important characteristics for determining erosion rates. The GMDH algorithm predicted the fan formation materials and rates of erosion with high accuracy (R2 = 0.94, R2 = 0.87).

An applicability test of the conventional and neural network methods to map the overall water quality of the Caspian Sea.

This study investigates the water quality of the Caspian Sea by examining the presence of nutrients and heavy metals in the water. Water samples were collected from 22 stations and analyzed for nutrient and heavy metal levels. The study used the fuzzy method to prepare water quality maps and employed ANNs methods to predict microbial contamination for future years. The results revealed that the western and northwestern parts of the region had higher nutrient levels (about 40.2 % of the region), while the eastern and northeastern shores were highly polluted due to increased urbanization (about 70.1 % of the region). The long short-term memory (LSTM) method was found to have the highest accuracy compared to other ANNs methods and indicated a recent increase in pollution (RWater quality2=0.940, ROECD2=0.950, RTRIX2=0.840). The study recommends targeted research to identify the causes and means of controlling pollution in light of the predicted increase in pollution in the Caspian Sea.

Habitat suitability modeling of Descurainia sophia medicinal plant using three bivariate models.

Climate change has caused medicinal plants to become increasingly endangered. Descurainia sophia (flixweed) is at risk of extinction in Fars Province, Iran, due to climate change and modifications of land use. Flixweed is highly valuable because of its medicinal properties. The conservation of this species using habitat suitability modeling seems necessary. In this research, the geographical locations of D. sophia's distribution in southern Iran were recorded and mapped using ArcGIS 10.2.2. Then, ten important variables affecting the growth of D. sophia medicinal plants were identified and prepared as thematic layers. These variables were, namely, "elevation," "slope degree," "slope aspect," "soil physical characteristics (sand, silt, and clay percentage)," "soil chemical properties (EC and pH)," "annual mean rainfall," "annual mean temperature," "distance to roads," "distance to rivers," and "plan curvature." In this study, three bivariate models, including the "index-of-entropy (IofE)," "frequency ratio (FR)," and "weight of evidence (WofE)," were used for mapping the habitat suitability of D. sophia. Moreover, the ROC curve and AUC index were used for evaluating the accuracy of the models. Based on the results, the IofE model ("AUC": 0.93) was the most accurate, while the FR ("AUC": 0.92) and WofE ("AUC": 0.90) models ranked second and third, respectively. The models in this study can be applied as tools for the protection of endangered medicinal plants. Furthermore, the map could assist planners, decision-makers, and engineers in extending study areas. By determining the habitat maps of medicinal plants, their extinction can be prevented. Such maps can also assist in the propagation of medicinal plants.

Flood vulnerability mapping and urban sprawl suitability using FR, LR, and SVM models.

Floods are among the most destructive disasters because they cause immense damage to human life, property (land and buildings), and resources. They also slow down a country's economy. Due to the dynamic and complex nature of floods, it is difficult to predict the areas that are prone to flooding. In this study, an attempt was made to create a suitability map for future urban development based on flood vulnerability maps for the catchment area of Taif, Saudi Arabia. Three models were used for this purpose, including bivariate (FR), multivariate (LR), and machine learning (SVM) were used. Thirteen parameters were used as flood-contributing parameters. The inventory map was constructed using field surveys, historical data, analysis of RADAR (Sentinel-1A), and Google Earth imagery collected between 2013 and 2020. In general, 70% flood locations were randomly selected from the flood inventory map to generate the flood susceptibility model, and the remaining 30% of the flood locations were used for model validation. The flood susceptibility map was classified into five zones: very low, low, moderate, high, and very high. The AUC value used to predict the performance of the models showed that the accuracy reached 89.5, 92.0, and 96.2% for the models FR, LR, and SVM, respectively. Accordingly, the flood susceptibility map produced by the SVM model is accurate and was used to produce a flood vulnerability map with the help of urban and road density maps. Then slope and elevation maps were integrated with the flood vulnerability model to produce the final suitability map, which was classified into three zones: isolated zone, low suitability, and high suitability areas. The results showed that the highly suitable areas are located in the east and northeast of the Taif Basin, where the flood risk is low and very low. The results of this work will improve the land use planning of engineers and authorities and take possible measures to reduce the flood hazards in the area.

Analytical techniques for mapping multi-hazard with geo-environmental modeling approaches and UAV images.

The quantitative spatial analysis is a strong tool for the study of natural hazards and their interactions. Over the last decades, a range of techniques have been exceedingly used in spatial analysis, especially applying GIS and R software. In the present paper, the multi-hazard susceptibility maps compared in 2020 and 2021 using an array of data mining techniques, GIS tools, and Unmanned aerial vehicles. The produced maps imply the most effective morphometric parameters on collapsed pipes, gully heads, and landslides using the linear regression model. The multi-hazard maps prepared using seven classifiers of Boosted regression tree (BRT), Flexible discriminant analysis (FDA), Multivariate adaptive regression spline (MARS), Mixture discriminant analysis (MDA), Random forest (RF), Generalized linear model (GLM), and Support vector machine (SVM). The results of each model revealed that the greatest percentage of the study region was low susceptible to collapsed pipes, landslides, and gully heads, respectively. The results of the multi-hazard models represented that 52.22% and 48.18% of the study region were not susceptible to any hazards in 2020 and 2021, while 6.19% (2020) and 7.39% (2021) of the region were at the risk of all compound events. The validation results indicate the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of all applied models was more than 0.70 for the landform susceptibility maps in 2020 and 2021. It was found where multiple events co-exist, what their potential interrelated effects are or how they interact jointly. It is the direction to take in the future to determine the combined effect of multi-hazards so that policymakers can have a better attitude toward sustainable management of environmental landscapes and support socio-economic development.

Assessing and mapping distribution, area, and density of riparian forests in southern Iran using Sentinel-2A, Google earth, and field data.

Riparian forests in Iran are valuable ecosystems which have many ecological values. Because of destruction of these forests in recent years, providing spatio-temporal information from area and distribution of these ecosystems has been receiving much attention. This study was performed for mapping distribution, area and density of riparian forests in southern Iran using Sentinel-2A, Google Earth, and field data. First Sentinel-2A satellite image of the study area was provided. The field work was performed to take the training areas and to assess the forest density of riparian forests in Khuzestan province. In the first part of this study, after selecting training areas as pixel-based samples on the Sentinel-2A satellite image, supervised classification of image was performed using support vector machine (SVM) algorithm to classify the distribution of riparian forests. After classification of Sentinel-2A satellite image, the boundary of riparian forests map was checked and corrected on Google Earth images. In the second part of this study, field data, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and regression model were used to assess the density of riparian forests. Finally, the accuracy of the final riparian forest map (showing both distribution and density of riparian forests) was assessed using Google Earth images. Results showed that the final riparian forest map (showing both distribution and density of riparian forests) with overall accuracy 89% and kappa index 0.81 had a good accuracy for classifying the distribution and density of riparian forests in Khuzestan province. These results demonstrate the accuracy of SVM algorithm for classifying the distribution of riparian forests and also capability of NDVI for classifying the density of riparian forests in this study. Results also showed that regression model (R2 = 0.97) is reliable for estimating riparian forest density. The results demonstrated that there are 68447.18 ha of riparian forest around the main rivers in Khuzestan province, mainly distributed in the northwest and southeast of the province. From this area, 54694.15 ha have been covered by dense forests and 13753.03 ha by sparse forests. Results of this research have created the useful data of area, distribution and density of riparian forests in 10-m spatial resolution which is necessary for conservation and management of these forests in southern Iran. It is suggested that mapping area, distribution and density of these forests would be performed using SVM algorithm and NDVI in the certain temporal periods for protective management of these ecosystems in time series.

Assessment of groundwater vulnerability in an urban area: a comparative study based on DRASTIC, EBF, and LR models.

The groundwater vulnerability assessment is known as a useful tool for predicting and prevention of groundwater pollution. This study targets the DRASTIC, evidential belief function (EBF), and logistic regression (LR) models to assess vulnerability in Kabul aquifers, Afghanistan Country. The growth of urban sprawl, groundwater overexploitation, and lack of suitable municipal sewage systems as anthropogenic sources have been the main potential to increase groundwater contaminants such as nitrate in the study area. The vulnerability map has been developed based on various effective factors including altitude, slope (percentage rise), aspect, curvature, land-use type, drainage density, distance from river, annual mean precipitation, net recharge, geology/lithology units, the impact of the vadose zone, aquifer media, depth to water (unsaturated zone), saturated zone, drawdown, and hydraulic conductivity. To identify groundwater pollution, the spatial variation of nitrate concentration data in 2018 was considered indication of groundwater pollution. Based on descriptive statistics, the value of 2.65 mg/l (the median of the pixel values of nitrate map) was selected as a threshold to differentiate the occurrence and non-occurrence of pollution. The groundwater quality data were selected and randomly divided into two datasets for training and validation, including 70% and 30%, respectively. The success-rate and prediction-rate curves were computed based on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the area under the curve (AUC) to estimate the efficiency of models. The ROC-AUC of success rates for EBF, LR, and DRASTIC models were estimated to be 67%, 66%, and 52%, respectively. Moreover, the ROC-AUC of the prediction rates of the EBF, LR, and DRASTIC models were obtained 61%, 63%, and 55%, respectively. Based on correlation between mean nitrate concentration and the mean vulnerability indexes in each model, the EBF model is the most compatible with the current developed vulnerability zones as the role of mankind in changing the environment in real conditions in comparison to LR and DRASTIC models.

Advanced machine learning algorithms for flood susceptibility modeling - performance comparison: Red Sea, Egypt.

Floods are among the most devastating environmental hazards that directly and indirectly affect people's lives and activities. In many countries, sustainable environmental management requires the assessment of floods and the likely flood-prone areas to avoid potential hazards. In this study, the performance and capabilities of seven machine learning algorithms (MLAs) for flood susceptibility mapping were tested, evaluated, and compared. These MLAs, including support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), multivariate adaptive regression spline (MARS), boosted regression tree (BRT), functional data analysis (FDA), general linear model (GLM), and multivariate discriminant analysis (MDA), were tested for the area between Safaga and Ras Gharib cities, Red Sea, Egypt. A geospatial database was developed with eleven flood-related factors, namely altitude, slope aspect, lithology, land use/land cover (LULC), slope length (LS), topographic wetness index (TWI), slope angle, profile curvature, plan curvature, stream power index (SPI), and hydrolithology units. In addition, 420 actual flooded areas were recorded from the study area to create a flood inventory map. The inventory data were randomly divided into training group with 70% and validation group with 30%. The flood-related factors were tested with a multicollinearity test, the variance inflation factor (VIF) was less than 2.135, the tolerance (TOL) was more than 0.468, and their importance was evaluated with a partial least squares (PLS) method. The results show that RF performed the best with the highest AUC (area under curve) value of 0.813, followed by GLM with 0.802, MARS with 0.801, BRT with 0.777, MDA with 0.768%, FDA with 0.763, and SVM with 0.733. The results of this study and the flood susceptibility maps could be useful for environmental mitigation, future development activities in the area, and flood control areas.

Investigating geometrical characteristics of collapsed pipes and the changing role of driving factors.

Determination of the amount (i.e., area and volume) of soil losses due to erosional landforms, especially collapsed pipes, plays a considerable role in different decision-making approaches. Further, mapping the spatial distribution and predicting the volumetric and areal losses of collapsed pipes (CPs) are essential for supporting ecosystem health. The study was conducted in relation to the area and volume of CPs and their related covariables. It focused on the estimation of soil losses due to collapsed pipes using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images as well as field covariates at the Chatal Watershed, Golestan Province, Iran. A total of 481 soil samples were collected from homogeneous units with an area of approximately 1,410 ha. The potential relationship between the area/volume of collapsed pipes and land use, several topographic attributes (i.e., altitude, slope, and aspect), and soil properties, including soil stability, soil organic matter, clay, silt, and sand contents were analyzed using five distance-based methods (i.e., kernel density (KD), average nearest neighbor (ANN), spatial autocorrelation, hotspot analysis (HSA), and ordinary least square (OLS) analysis. The average nearest neighbor (Ratio = 0.12, Z score = -20.30, p-value < 0.05) and Moran space solidarity (Moran index = 0.258, Z score = 5.50, p-value < 0.05) showed the cluster distribution of area and volume of CPs. Hot spots and cold spots in the southwestern part of the study area were identified using KD and HSA. The relationship between existing independent and dependent variables (area of CPs) using regression analysis of OLS showed that slope and aggregate stability (>2.5 standard deviation) had the highest positive relationship with the dependent variable. Regarding the volume of CPs, land use (especially agricultural lands) had the strongest relationship with the dependent variable. Thus, geometrical characteristics of collapsed pipes can be applied as a quantitative indicator for the identification of hotspot zones (hazardous areas), land use planning, and erosion hazard mitigation. However, more studies are required to measure geometrical characteristics of soil landforms.

A multi-criteria GIS-based model for wind farm site selection with the least impact on environmental pollution using the OWA-ANP method.

Wind energy is considered one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to generate electricity, since it has a low environmental impact. So, it is essential to identify the best places to build wind farms that have the lowest impact on human health and the highest performance. In order to determine the appropriate locations for the construction of wind power plants, in the study first, the interpolation maps of the most important parameters for the construction of wind power plants were created. Then, using the analytic network process (ANP) method due to higher accuracy than other weighting methods (the two-by-two comparison of external and internal data), the weight of each criterion was determined by establishing the external and internal relationships between the criteria and sub-criteria. In this study, since the objective was to prepare land suitability maps with different levels of risk in order to further manage the area, the OWA method was used to prepare land suitability maps. Based on the results of the ANP method for weighing each parameter, wind speed and protected areas were the most and least important parameters to build the power plant. According to the results of the OWA method, 0.78 and 0.1% of the area were suitable for building power plants at high and low risk levels, respectively. The study also found that the number of wind turbines that can be built in the region at both high and low risk levels was 422 and 75, respectively. Using the buffer function, the number of turbines for the construction of high-risk power plants was reduced to 284 by using the appropriate distance from residential areas. The ANP and OWA methods were used to prepare several maps for the evaluation of land suitability with different levels of risk, one of which could be used for the construction of a power plant.

Multi-hazard spatial modeling via ensembles of machine learning and meta-heuristic techniques.

Considering the large number of natural disasters on the planet, many areas in the world are at risk of these hazards; therefore, providing an integrated map as a guide map for multiple natural hazards can be applied to save human lives and reduce financial losses. This study designed a multi-hazard map for three important hazards (earthquakes, floods, and landslides) to identify endangered areas in Kermanshah province located in western Iran using ensemble SWARA-ANFIS-PSO and SWARA-ANFIS-GWO models. In the first step, flood and landslide inventory maps were generated to identify at-risk areas. Then, the occurrence places for each hazard were divided into two groups for training susceptibility models (70%) and testing the models applied (30%). Factors affecting these hazards, including altitude, slope aspect, slope degree, plan curvature, distance to rivers, distance to roads, distance to the faults, rainfall, lithology, and land use, were used to generate susceptibility maps. The SWARA method was used to weigh the subclasses of the influencing factors in floods and landslides. In addition, a peak ground acceleration (PGA) map was generated to investigate earthquakes in the study area. In the next step, the ANFIS machine learning algorithm was used in combination with PSO and GWO meta-heuristic algorithms to train the data, and SWARA-ANFIS-PSO and SWARA-ANFIS-GWO susceptibility maps were separately generated for flood and landslide hazards. The predictive ability of the implemented models was validated using the receiver operating characteristics (ROC), root mean square error (RMSE), and mean square error (MSE) methods. The results showed that the SWARA-ANFIS-PSO ensemble model had the best performance in generating flood susceptibility maps with ROC = 0.936, RMS = 0.346, and MSE = 0.120. Furthermore, this model showed excellent results (ROC = 0.894, RMS = 0.410, and MSE = 0.168) for generating a landslide map. Finally, the best maps and PGA map were combined, and a multi-hazard map (MHM) was obtained for Kermanshah Province. This map can be used by managers and planners as a practical guide for sustainable development.

Spatial modeling of land subsidence using machine learning models and statistical methods.

Land subsidence causes many problems every year and damages residential areas and agricultural lands. The purpose of this study is to prepare a susceptibility map to the phenomenon of land subsidence in the central and eastern plains of Fars province in Iran using statistical and machine learning models. Initially, with a wide inspection, the locations of land subsidence in the study region were recorded using the global positioning system (GPS), and a spatial distribution of subsidence was provided then for building and evaluating learning models; the data was partitioned into two sections of calibration (70%) and testing (30%) dataset. In the following stage, the maps of the factors affecting the land subsidence were prepared using basic information (geological and topographic maps and satellite images) in raster format, and the relationship between land subsidence locations and the effective factors including slope percentage, slope aspect, distance from the road, distance from the river, land use, plan curvature, topographic wetness index, geology (lithological units), distance from the faults, and groundwater level changes was considered in the study area. To investigate the multicollinearity between independent variables, tolerance and variance inflation factor (VIF) measures were used, and to prioritize the effective factors, the random forest (RF) algorithm was applied. The results indicated that the most important factors affecting land subsidence were groundwater level changes, land use, height, distance from the fault, distance from the river, and topographic wetness index, respectively. For further analysis, a land subsidence susceptibility zoning map was prepared using logistic regression (LR), random forest (RF), boosting regression tree (BRT), and support vector machine (SVM) models, and the results were evaluated. The evaluation results indicated that the models mentioned have high accuracy in modeling land subsidence such that the boosting regression tree and the logistic regression have high (0.873 and 0.853, respectively) and the random forest and support vector machine models have very high accuracy (0.953 and 0.926, respectively). The findings of this study indicated that the machine learning techniques and prepared maps can be applied for land use planning, groundwater management, and management of the study area for future agriculture tasks.

A novel hybrid of support vector regression and metaheuristic algorithms for groundwater spring potential mapping.

Limited groundwater resources and their overexploitation have become major challenges for sustainable development worldwide. In this study, an innovative hybrid approach was proposed to generate a groundwater spring potential map (GSPM) from the Sarab plain located in Lorestan Province, Iran, which includes the new best-worst method (BWM), stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA), support vector machine learning method (SVR), Harris hawk optimization (HHO), and bat algorithms (BA). The first step involved the inventory of a map prepared to contain 610 spring locations. Randomly, 70% of the spring points were selected as training data, and the remaining 30% were selected for validation. Based on the review of the literature and available data, thirteen factors were generated as independent variables. The BWM and SWARA methods were used to identify correlations between the occurrence of springs and factors. Finally, using SVR-BA and SVR-HHO hybrid models, potential maps of groundwater springs were generated and then evaluated with receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and several statistical evaluators such as sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and kappa index. Validation of the training data set showed that the success rates for the SWARA-SVR-BA, SWARA-SVR-HHO, BWM-SVR-BA, and BWM-SVR-HHO models were 92.6%, 93.7%, 95.9%, and 96.4%, respectively. The results revealed that with a small difference, BWM-SVR-HHO performed better in training compared to other models. Evaluation of the prediction rate showed that the values of the area under the ROC curve for SWARA-SVR-BA, SWARA-SVR-HHO, BWM-SVR-HHO, and BWM-SVR-BA were 91.7%, 92.4%, 93.3%, and 94.7%, respectively. According to the results, although all models had excellent performance with more than 90% accuracy, BWM-SVR-BA was more accurate in predicting. The hybrid models presented in this study can be used as an accurate and effective methodology to improve the results of spatial modeling of the probability of groundwater occurrence.

Investigation of water quality and its spatial distribution in the Kor River basin, Fars province, Iran.

As one of the largest rivers in the southwest of Iran, the Kor River plays an important role in local economy and ecosystem. However, the rapid development of industry has caused significant pollution in this river in recent years. Despite of a number of studies reported on this river regarding water pollution, few have conducted a comprehensive investigation of a wide range of water quality parameters to map the current pollution status. This study focuses on 21 water quality parameters around the industrial centers of the Kor River basin with samples taken from 25 stations. With the measured parameters, the interpolation maps of each parameter were determined using the Kriging method, and the water quality was quantified using the Water Quality Index (WQI) method. The results showed that the WQI values were between 28 and 73, showing more pollution around the factories than in the upstream areas. The results of the principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that BOD, COD, NO3-, and coliforms were the most important parameters among the 21 parameters affecting the water quality. Linear regression results suggested that the best parameters for determining coliforms and WQI values were BOD, and Cr, PO43-, Hg and Zn levels, respectively, with R2 greater than 0.87. These results can also simplify the prediction of coliforms and WQI using only a few parameters. We further found that flatter regions generally had more pollution, primarily due to pollutant accumulation as a result of water stagnation.

Habitat potential modelling and mapping of Teucrium polium using machine learning techniques.

Determining suitable habitats is important for the successful management and conservation of plant and wildlife species. Teucrium polium L. is a wild plant species found in Iran. It is widely used to treat numerous health problems. The range of this plant is shrinking due to habitat destruction and overexploitation. Therefore, habitat suitability (HS) modeling is critical for conservation. HS modeling can also identify the key characteristics of habitats that support this species. This study models the habitats of T. polium using five data mining models: random forest (RF), flexible discriminant analysis (FDA), multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), support vector machine (SVM), and generalized linear model (GLM). A total of 119 T. poliumlocations were identified and mapped. According to the RF model, the most important factors describing T. polium habitat were elevation, soil texture, and mean annual rainfall. HS maps (HSMs) were prepared, and habitat suitability was classified as low, medium, high, or very high. The percentages of the study area assigned high or very high suitability ratings by each of the models were 44.62% for FDA, 43.75% for GLM, 43.12% for SVM, 38.91% for RF, 28.72% for MARS, and 39.16% for their ensemble. Although the six models were reasonably accurate, the ensemble model had the highest AUC value, demonstrating a strong predictive performance. The rank order of the other models in this regard is RF, MARS, SVM, FDA, and GLM. HSMs can provide useful output to support the sustainable management of rangelands, reclamation, and land protection.

A multi-hazard map-based flooding, gully erosion, forest fires, and earthquakes in Iran.

We used three state-of-the-art machine learning techniques (boosted regression tree, random forest, and support vector machine) to produce a multi-hazard (MHR) map illustrating areas susceptible to flooding, gully erosion, forest fires, and earthquakes in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province, Iran. The earthquake hazard map was derived from a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis. The mean decrease Gini (MDG) method was implemented to determine the relative importance of effective factors on the spatial occurrence of each of the four hazards. Area under the curve (AUC) plots, based on a validation dataset, were created for the maps generated using the three algorithms to compare the results. The random forest model had the highest predictive accuracy, with AUC values of 0.994, 0.982, and 0.885 for gully erosion, flooding, and forest fires, respectively. Approximately 41%, 40%, 28%, and 3% of the study area are at risk of forest fires, earthquakes, floods, and gully erosion, respectively.

Determining the geographical model and environmental resilience patterns in Iranian provinces.

Considering environmental resources as a context for sustainable development is of paramount importance. Iran has faced a variety of environmental problems over the past few decades due to population development, changing patterns of residence, and urban development. Resilience measures the adaptation to changes occurring after unwanted events. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate environmental resilience (natural and human factors) among the Iranian provinces. Then, the environmental resilience index was categorized through a data mining method, and the required measures for each pattern were presented according to the obtained patterns. Based on the results, Semnan Province had the highest environmental resilience, whereas Tehran, Alborz, Hormozgan, Isfahan, Khorasan Razavi, Khuzestan, and Sistan and Baluchestan had the lowest environmental resilience index (ERI). In addition, the results of data mining indicate that the provinces have five distinct patterns. CO2 emissions and drinking water access indicators have the highest and lowest importance in the formation of patterns, respectively. Furthermore, the environmental resilience of Tehran Province was influenced more by both indicators of energy use and CO2 emissions. Therefore, improvements in energy efficiency, developing public transportation, using standard fuels, and modernizing old industries should be considered as ways to increase productivity. The results of resilience patterns significantly help planners and managers develop policies and programs to increase environmental resilience.