Artificial neural network for flood susceptibility mapping in Bangladesh

The objective of the research is to investigate flood susceptibility in the Sylhet division of Bangladesh. Eight influential factors (i.e., elevation, slope, aspect, curvature, TWI, SPI, roughness, and LULC) were applied as inputs to the model. In this work, 1280 samples were taken at different locations based on flood and non-flood characteristics; of these, 75% of the inventory dataset was used for training and 25% for testing. An artificial neural network was applied to develop a flood susceptibility model, and the results were plotted on a map using ArcGIS. According to the finding, 40.98% (i.e., 499433.50 hectors) of the study area is found within the very high-susceptibility zone, and 37.43% (i.e., 456168.76 hectors) are in the highly susceptible zone. Only 6.52% and 15% of the area were found in low and medium flood susceptibility zones, respectively. The results of model validation show that the overall prediction rate is around 89% and the overall model success rate is around 98%. The study's findings assist policymakers and concerned authorities in making flood risk management decisions in order to mitigate the negative impacts.