Joint modelling of landslide counts and sizes using spatial marked point processes with sub-asymptotic mark distributions

Abstract

Abstract To accurately quantify landslide hazard in a region of Turkey, we develop new marked point-process models within a Bayesian hierarchical framework for the joint prediction of landslide counts and sizes. We leverage mark distributions justified by extreme-value theory, and specifically propose ‘sub-asymptotic’ distributions to flexibly model landslide sizes from low to high quantiles. The use of intrinsic conditional autoregressive priors, and a customised adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm, allow for fast fully Bayesian inference. We show that sub-asymptotic mark distributions provide improved predictions of large landslide sizes, and use our model for risk assessment and hazard mapping.