A hyper parameterized artificial neural network approach for prediction of the factor of safety against liquefaction

Abstract

Soil liquefaction during earthquakes is a complex geotechnical engineering problem. Although various analytical approaches exist for predicting liquefaction risk, their limitations have led researchers to explore using artificial intelligence and machine learning methods. Machine learning has the potential to significantly improve the ability to predict soil liquefaction and mitigate the associated risks. This study proposes a hyper parameterized artificial neural network architecture using random search, grid search, and Bayesian optimization algorithms to predict the factor of safety against liquefaction. The performances of hyper parameterized machine learning algorithms, including artificial neural networks (ANN), decision trees (DT), random forest (RF), and support vector regression (SVR), were compared. Statistical tests show that the proposed ANN outperformed the others with a determination coefficient of 0.99 at a 95% significance level. Hyperparameter optimization significantly improved learning performance with up to a 48% reduction in RMSE scores. The proposed method was compared with previous studies, and performance results confirmed its effectiveness and generalization ability. In conclusion, this study highlights the potential of machine learning algorithms for predicting soil liquefaction and emphasizes the importance of hyperparameter optimization for improving model performance. The findings of this study have practical implications for improving liquefaction risk assessment and mitigating the associated hazards. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.