Discriminant analysis of the geomorphic characteristics and stability of landslide dams

Landslides can cause the formation of dams, but these dams often fail soon after lake formation. Thus, rapidly evaluating the stability of a landslide dam is crucial for effective hazard mitigation. This study utilizes discriminant analysis based on a Japanese dataset consisting of 43 well documented landslide dams to determine the significant variables, including log-transformed peak flow (or catchment area), and log-transformed dam height, width and length in hierarchical order, which affect the stability of a landslide dam. The high overall prediction power (88.4% of the 43 training cases are correctly classified) and the high cross-validation accuracy (86%) demonstrate the robustness of the proposed discriminant models PHWL (with variables including log-transformed peak flow, and log-transformed dam height, width and length) and AHWL (with variables including log-transformed catchment area, and log-transformed dam height, width and length). Compared to a previously proposed “DBI” index-based graphic approach, the discriminant model AHV – which uses the log-transformed catchment area, dam height, and dam volume as relevant variables – shows better ability to evaluate the stability of landslide dams. Although these discriminant models are established using a Japanese dataset only, the present multivariate statistical approach can be applied for an expanded dataset without any difficulty when more completely documented worldwide landslide-dam data are available.