LAND-SUITE V1.0: a suite of tools for statistically based landslide susceptibility zonation

Abstract

In the past 50 years, a large variety of statisti- cally based models and methods for landslide susceptibility mapping and zonation have been proposed in the literature. The methods, which are applicable to a large range of spa- tial scales, use a large variety of input thematic data, differ- ent model combinations, and several approaches to evaluate the models’ performance. Despite the numerous applications available in the literature, a standard approach for suscepti- bility modeling and zonation is still missing. The literature search revealed that several software pro- gram and tools are available to evaluate regional slope stability using physically based analysis, but only a few use statistically based approaches. Among them, LAND-SE (LANDslide Susceptibility Evaluation) provides the possi- bility to perform and combine different statistical suscepti- bility models and to evaluate their performances and asso- ciated uncertainties. This paper describes the structure and the functionalities of LAND-SUITE, a suite of tools for sta- tistically based landslide susceptibility modeling which in- tegrates LAND-SE. LAND-SUITE completes and extends LAND-SE, adding functionalities to (i) facilitate input data preparation, (ii) perform preliminary and exploratory analy- sis of the available data, and (iii) test different combinations of variables and select the optimal thematic/explanatory set. LAND-SUITE provides a tool to assist the user during the data preparatory phase and to perform diversified statistically based landslide susceptibility applications.