Response-balanced sampling relocates rather than improves accuracy in slope-stability surrogates under a fixed simulation budget

Abstract

Machine-learning surrogates of slope stability learn factors of safety (FOS) that only physics-based analyses produce, so analyses are the budget to allocate. Because Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) of the parameters covers the FOS unevenly, a natural remedy is to choose part of the training points to even out the FOS distribution. We test this response-balanced sampling at a fixed budget. A random-forest screener trained on a 300-point LHS seed predicts the FOS of 200,000 candidates, and 300 further limit-equilibrium analyses are allocated to even out the FOS over the selection range, $[0.5, 6]$. The design is compared with 300 further LHS analyses over five realizations of the added points, on two test sets, under two independently tuned tree-ensemble families, with ablations throughout; an oracle drawing from 22,000 solved analyses meets the intended density exactly. The primary criterion is the log-scale root-mean-square error (log-RMSE) on the decision range, FOS $\in [0.5, 2)$, against continued LHS. Response-balanced sampling does not systematically improve accuracy; it relocates accuracy along the FOS axis, consistently across realizations, from $[1, 2)$ to $[0.5, 1)$, following the training density actually achieved, even when the intended density is met exactly. On the decision range no screener-selected design shows a demonstrated gain, and with known bin membership that verdict stands, in this design. Within the selection range, LHS gives $[0.5, 1)$ 11-12% of the points against a log-uniform target's 27.9%, but $[1, 2)$ already 35-37%: the region that is rare need not be where decisions are made.