TITLE:
Vulnerability Analysis of Land Instability Using Multi-Criteria Evaluation for Urban Sustainability: Methodological Overview and Case Study Assessment
AUTHORS:
Ali Amasha
KEYWORDS:
Hazards Assessment, Driving Forces, Land Instability, MCE-AHP-OWA, Resilience, Spatial Analysis
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.6 No.11,
November
26,
2018
ABSTRACT: There were many developed urban areas have been established without well
studied from the hazards perspective. However, Mokattam Plateau is one of
the most vulnerable areas of frequent landslides and rock-falls disasters
(Moustafa et al., 1991). So, an integrated analysis method is highly needed.
Spatial analysis of Multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) provided an assessment of
the hazards’ factors (i.e. faults, joints, lithology, slope, old wadies/surface
drainage, and quarries) at Mokattam area. The data have been analyzed by
the MCE, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)/Ordered Weighted Average
(OWA)/Weighted Linear Combination (WLC). The research found that the
geological factors (faults, joints, and lithology) were the highest contributors
by about 65% of the hazardous driving forces, while the geomorphological
processes (slope and old wadies/surface drainage) were contributed by about
30%. In addition, the impact of the human activities such as random urbanization,
excess use of irrigation water and the transportation are critical hidden
drivers that affect the land instability and accelerates the landslides and
rock-falls (Amasha, 2009). Therefore, the decision makers and urban planners
have to consider the four scenarios of low risk-high tradeoff (MIDAND),
and high risk-some tradeoff (MIDOR) in their disaster risk management
plans. While the risk-taking (OR) option is highly recommended for the new
urban development projects to ensure the sustainability and risk resilience.
While the risk-averse (AND) scenario is not recommended.