Prediction–area (P–A) plot and C–A fractal analysis to classify and evaluate evidential maps for mineral prospectivity modeling

•Prediction–area (P–A) plot is proposed to weight individual evidence layers.•The plot is used to recognize effective indicator criteria for exploration.•We explored the effect of transformation on prediction rate of mineral deposit.

There are methods of mineral prospectivity mapping whereby, besides assignment of weights to classes of evidence in an evidential map, every evidential map is also given a weight based on expert opinion. In this regard, evaluating the relative importance of every evidential map derived from particular spatial data sets is a highly subjective exercise and the assignment of meaningful weights to evidential maps usually involves a trial-and-error procedure. In this paper, we used a prediction–area (P–A) plot and normalized density to estimate weights of every evidential map. The method of P–A plot is a data-driven way, rather than using expert opinion, to evaluate and weight evidential maps.