<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-G-2025-1347-2025</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Flood risk mapping and performance efficiency evaluation of machine learning algorithms: Best practice in northern Iran</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Shirmohammadi</surname>
<given-names>Mahdieh</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Pirasteh</surname>
<given-names>Saied</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Li</surname>
<given-names>Weilian</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mafi-Gholami</surname>
<given-names>Davood</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Shaoxing University, Shaoxing, 508 West Huancheng Road, Yuecheng District, Zhejiang Province, Postal Code 312000, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Southwest Jiaotong University, Faculty of Geosciences and Engineering, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Metrology Research Group, Quality Assessment and Management Systems Research Center, Standard Research Institute, PO Box 31585-163, Karaj, Alborz, Iran</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>31</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2025</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XLVIII-G-2025</volume>
<fpage>1347</fpage>
<lpage>1352</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2025 Mahdieh Shirmohammadi et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-G-2025/1347/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-G-2025-1347-2025.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-G-2025/1347/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-G-2025-1347-2025.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-G-2025/1347/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-G-2025-1347-2025.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-G-2025/1347/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-G-2025-1347-2025.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Flooding is one of the most devastating natural hazards, and inadequate management can amplify its impacts, leading to severe social, economic, and environmental consequences. Accurate and efficient flood risk mapping is essential for mitigating these effects and supporting effective disaster management strategies. However, challenges remain in optimizing the accuracy and reliability of machine learning (ML) algorithms for flood susceptibility assessment. In this study, we applied several ML algorithms, including Random Forest (RF), XGBoost (Extreme Gradient Boosting), LightGBM, CatBoost, and Support Vector Machine (SVM), to develop flood risk maps for a region in northern Iran. For the analysis, we selected a comprehensive set of environmental and geographical parameters influencing flood susceptibility. These included the Digital Elevation Model (DEM), slope, aspect, Topographic Wetness Index (TWI), Stream Power Index (SPI), river distance, river density, rainfall, lithology, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI), soil texture, and land use. Data processing, feature extraction, and model training were conducted using Python, Google Earth Engine, and ArcGIS. Our results demonstrate a strong level of consistency across the models. XGBoost achieved the highest Area Under the Curve (AUC) of 0.87, closely followed by CatBoost at 0.86, Random Forest (RF), and LightGBM, each reaching 0.85. SVM recorded a slightly lower AUC of 0.82. These findings underscore the robust performance of advanced ML algorithms, particularly ensemble methods with tree-based structures, in flood risk mapping, especially within complex environmental contexts.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="6"/></counts>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>