Landslide Susceptibility Assessment in Yulong County Using Contribution Degree Clustering Method and Stacking Ensemble Coupled Model Based on Certainty Factor

To address the subjectivity of traditional factor attribute grading methods and the weak predictive capabilities of single-model classifications, this study focused on Yulong County; the Contribution Degree Clustering Method (CDCM) utilizes the Certainty Factor (CF) as the contribution index to partition continuous factor attribute intervals. Additionally, the Sparrow Search Optimization Algorithm (SSA) is employed for hyperparameter tuning. The CF is incorporated into Support Vector Machine (SVM), Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN), and Random Forest (RF) models to form the CF-SSA-SVM, CF-SSA-BPNN, and CF-SSA-RF coupling models, respectively. These basic coupling models are further integrated using the Stacking algorithm to create the CF-SSA-Stacking integrated coupling model for constructing a landslide susceptibility assessment system. The results indicate that the CF-SSA-Stacking integrated coupling model achieves the highest accuracy, F1 score, Kappa coefficient, and AUC value, with values of 0.89375, 0.89172, 0.787500, and 0.9522, respectively. These metrics are significantly superior to those of the three basic coupling models, demonstrating better generalization capability and reliability. This suggests that the model can identify more historical landslide occurrences using fewer grid areas classified as extremely-high- or high-susceptibility zones. It is suitable as an effective regional landslide susceptibility assessment method for practical disaster prevention and mitigation applications. Further studies could explore the model’s performance across varying geological settings or with different datasets, providing a roadmap for future research and development in landslide susceptibility assessment.