A predictive framework for land subsidence risk in Silakhor: integrating machine and deep learning

Land subsidence, a complex phenomenon with extensive environmental and economic consequences, presents a significant challenge in the Silakhor Plain, Lorestan Province. This study investigates the effective factors on subsidence, including land use, drainage density, soil properties, and groundwater level changes, using machine learning and deep learning models. The results indicate that soil properties, excessive groundwater exploitation, and human infrastructure are the primary drivers of subsidence, with the central and southeastern parts of the plain facing the highest risk due to the high density of water wells and proximity to active faults. Among the four advanced models utilized: Random Forest (RF), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), the RF model demonstrated the best performance in predicting subsidence intensity, exhibiting the highest coefficient of determination (R² = 0.9880) and the lowest error (MSE = 0.0516). Furthermore, in the classification of subsidence-prone and non-subsidence areas, RF showed significant superiority with a precision of 0.9929 and a recall of 0.9999. The deep learning models also demonstrated strong performance. The LSTM model, with an R-squared of 0.9792, and the CNN model, with an R-squared of 0.9695, showed excellent capability in predicting subsidence intensity and identifying subsidence-prone areas (with a Recall of 1 for both models). However, their specificity was lower compared to the RF model. In contrast, the RNN model provided poorer performance in both prediction and classification compared to other models. SHAP analysis further confirmed these findings, indicating that soil properties, surface water resources, and human infrastructure-related factors play the most significant roles in subsidence occurrence. The findings of this research can serve as a basis for future planning in water and land resource management, as well as for developing effective strategies to mitigate subsidence risks in the Silakhor Plain and similar regions.