Constructing physical-based rainfall landslides prediction model: Insights from rainfall threshold curves database of slope units

Abstract. The commonly used rainfall threshold warning method relies heavily on historical rainfall and landslide inventory data, which limits its applicability in regions that lack these data. While physical methods do not rely on landslide inventories to establish warning criteria, the calculation of the safety factor typically requires considerable time. To address these issues, this study integrates physical methods, rainfall threshold warning methods, and slope units to develop a rapid forecasting model for rainfall landslides at a regional scale. A hydrological analysis technique for slope units based on grid cells was developed to calculate the instability probability of slope units. Then, each slope unit was analyzed under 20 levels of antecedent effective precipitation and nearly 200 combinations of rainfall intensity (I) and duration (D) to derive the key fitting parameters α and β of the I-D curves under various rainfall scenarios. The application results from Fengjie County indicate that the model runs in less than 12 min, with missing alarm and false alarm rates of 11.8 % and 21.1 %, respectively, highlighting its excellent potential for practical application. This study is expected to provide insights for the rapid forecasting of rainfall landslides in the impoverished mountainous regions of developing countries.