Landslide hazard assessment of the Neom promising city, northwestern Saudi Arabia: An integrated approach

Abstract

Landslides hazard as one of the major environmental threats of the Neom promising city in northwestern Saudi Arabia has been assessed through data integration of several sources including topographic, geologic, and seismologic data sets. Moreover, Landsat imagery and historical landslide data are introduced in assessing landslide susceptibility of the study area. All these data oriented to generate eight thematic layers representing eight landslide conditioning factors. These factors arranged according to their relative importance for landslide susceptibility mapping as follows: slope angle, elevation, curvature, aspect, earthquake density, fault density, drainage density, and lineaments density. These factors were assessed using GIS through a numerical rating scheme for thematic layers. The ranks and weights were given in association with intensive field studies and authors’ experiences. The estimated values of Landslide Potential Index (LPI) varies from 32 up to 107. Then, the resultant landslide susceptibility map classifies the landslide hazards into three relative classes of susceptibility: high, moderate, and low. Furthermore, this map was tested through several field checks and the extracted historical landslides within Neom area as well. This landslide susceptibility map will boost decision-making authority while executing the developing projects throughout the Neom promising area either avoiding strategic facilities or applying corrective geotechnical procedures to minimize the landslide hazardous impact for Neom city.