Landslide susceptibility mapping by comparing the WLC and WofE multi-criteria methods in the West Crete Island, Greece

In the current research, the weighted linear combination (WLC) and the weights of evidence (WofE) methods were applied for landslide susceptibility zonation mapping in the Chania Prefecture of Crete Island, Greece. Several thematic maps representing various landslide conditioning factors, such as geology formations, faults proximity, altitude, slope gradient, aspect, curvature, rivers proximity, precipitation, roads proximity and land use types have been generated in a GIS environment. Three landslide susceptibility maps were created, one for each method and a combined one by applying the logistic regression approach to the WLC and WofE susceptibility maps. The maps were evaluated and validated using the efficiency rate curve, the receiver-operator curve and the spatially agreed areas methods. The resulting landslide susceptibility maps have uncertainties introduced due to the subjective knowledge of experts in the case of WLC method and to the quality of the recorded landslides sample in the case of the WofE method. Nevertheless, the performance of the three approaches was found to be almost equal with all methods to produce quite satisfactory results. Besides the comparison of the applied methods, the current study contributes to the risk management of the area, providing the first landslide susceptibility maps for Chania Prefecture.