Evaluation and prediction of slope stability using machine learning approaches

Abstract

In this paper, the machine learning (ML) model is built for slope stability evaluation and meets the high precision and rapidity requirements in slope engineering. Different ML methods for the factor of safety (FOS) prediction are studied and compared hoping to make the best use of the large variety of existing statistical and ML regression methods collected. The data set of this study includes six characteristics, namely unit weight, cohesion, internal friction angle, slope angle, slope height, and pore water pressure ratio. The whole ML model is primarily divided into data preprocessing, outlier processing, and model evaluation. In the data preprocessing, the duplicated data are first removed, then the outliers are filtered by the LocalOutlierFactor method and finally, the data are standardized. 11 ML methods are evaluated for their ability to learn the FOS based on different input parameter combinations. By analyzing the evaluation indicators R ², MAE, and MSE of these methods, SVM, GBR, and Bagging are considered to be the best regression methods. The performance and reliability of the nonlinear regression method are slightly better than that of the linear regression method. Also, the SVM-poly method is used to analyze the susceptibility of slope parameters.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

slope stability / factor of safety / regression / machine learning / repeated cross-validation

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Acknowledgements

Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11972043 and 11902134), Open Research Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, and Chinese Academy of Sciences (Z019008), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project (No. 2020M670077).

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