Evaluation and zonation of landslide hazard of northern Tehran district

Abstract

Tehran is the country's most densely populated district which is located on the southern part of Alborz Mountains. Many sensitive infrastructures such as dams, roads, power lines and housing complexes are located within the area. In this paper the potential of landslide hazard for North Tehran is evaluated and a hazard zonation map based on ARC-GIS method is prepared. Several parameters such as lithology, slope angle, slope direction, distance from faults and seismicity (earthquake deduced acceleration) are considered as main factors. The quality parameters of the defined effecting factors are quantified by the above named software where the data layers are divided into smaller classes. In the next stage, specific weights are assigned to each class and the hazard potential values are determined. Finally they are presented as a landslide hazard zonation map of the area. It was found that slope angle of 16-35°, slope direction from 40° to 140°, lithology of tuffacious rocks, distance of fewer 2 km from fault and seismicity of over 0.5 g has great effect on the distribution of landslide in the area. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.