Urban, industrial and tourist developments
are considered of high priority in Egypt. The study area
is located on the NW bank of the Gulf of Suez, approximately
20 km south of Suez city. It is one of the promising new
development areas for public, industrial and tourist activities.
The development area encounters several geoenvironmental
problems that may limit its suitability for civil projects.
In the current research, the preliminary hazard/suitability
site investigation for rating different environmental,
geological and geotechnical conditions facing civil projects
were assessed using a Geographic Information System (GIS).
Previous methods focused on one aspect, while ignoring
the rest. However, with the advantage of GIS, a weighted
GIS model integrating different types of data, such as
landuse/cover, geological, geomorphological, geophysical,
environmental, remote sensing, and field data, can be established
to create a suitability/hazard map for the area. Analytical
hierarchy process (AHP) approach was used to develop the
weighted model for different factors. As a result of this
study, areas of potential geotechnical and geoenvironmental
hazards that could impact the design and construction of
civil projects have been identified. Also, changes can
be made early in the design process before significant
design effort is invested.
Urbanization is now a common feature of
all the third world countries. For the past two decades,
the Egyptian government has encouraged development projects
in the desert areas outside the Nile valley and delta.
The valley of the river Nile has been the focus of the
majority of the population concentration of Egypt. In the
present time, the Nile valley is occupied by 96% of the
population of Egypt (Aly, 1997).
Geographic Information System (GIS) has
become a prevalent method of analysis in civil projects.
Flexible GIS models that manipulate, compile and process
spatial data above or below the earth's surface, have provided
a powerful tool in civil engineering applications. GIS
in conjunction with remote sensing, geophysical data, as
well as other governmental records can be used to determine
the preliminary hazard/suitability site investigation.
This will help in identifying different potential hazards
that will affect development in the area, especially if
the area is so promising for urban development, tourism
village activities and industrial projects, requiring urban
and highway constructions. There is a need for computer
technology to deal with the problems relating to the storing,
manipulating and analyzing of data, which exist within
the space framework that has been growing recently. While
GIS is specialized by being the only fully integrated information
system incorporating analysis, modeling, database management
and automated mapping capabilities, it can deal with all
different types of data that can be acquired from different
sources. On the other hand, a little consideration is given
to the geoenvironment and potential geologic/geotechnic
hazards. In some of the new development areas in Egypt,
potential problems are related to the bedrock suitability
for urbanization, flood hazard zones, as well as the failure
to thoroughly investigate the distance from faults before
construction. According to the increase in the structural
failures that have developed in the new development areas,
remedial investigations and repairs to mitigate the problems
have been necessary in several cases. |
