International Conference on Civil Engineering

Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development

18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Choose the best route variants based on environmental

parameters using remote sensing and Geographic Information
System

mohammad afrazi1 * , farzad mardan2 , arezoo ghahramani3

1. bachelor student of civil engineering shiraz university, mohamad.afrazi@gmail.com

2. kerman graduate university of technology geotechnic , mardan.farzad@gmail.com
3. bachelor student of architecture engineering shiraz university, ferancias_architect@yahoo.com

Abstract
Construction projects and resources in order to reduce damage to the environment and achieve
permanent development and also the optimal design of ways in terms of safety and security
environmental parameters have to be involved in the process routing. In this paper, to achieve this goal
we used geographic Information System and also remote sensing techniques. In this study the way of
Rafsanjan to zarand was selected as a case study.at first, the environmental parameters affecting
routing path identified. These parameters include the: land use and The vegetation, underground water
levels, subsidence areas, region geology, Location of faults and topographical features. each of these
factors were prepared in a special methods that mainly the techniques of remote sensing were used in
the preparation of these layers then relative weight was given to each of these layers and were
combined in a GIS. and at the end high-risk areas were identified. that in zero phase studies and
choose the best path of between two point should be taken into consideration.

Key words: subsidence areas, choose the best path, remote sensing, sustainable Development

1. Introduction
In today's world, transport including the underlying sectors is the economy of the society
that in addition impressing the process of economic development that it will be change in
developing process and development of transportation will lead to economic growth. this
among The railway according to the specific characteristics including high safety and lower
power consumption have special place among of the transport system.

Due to the extent and position of Iran in the region and dispersal of points of production
and consumption railway development will be a vital necessity. in the road construction one
of the most important and the most basic of study and design stages is the design of the
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

primary path or selfsame zero-phase studies. that in this phase gathering information to find
the generally variants between two points will be paid with respect to existing parameters. in
rail routing with common methods mainly economic and technical parameters are considered
and usually environmental costs or damages that may during construction and after
construction upon the susceptible ecosystems around path comes in not included but The
research shows that the lack of attention to environmental issues in this step of work Led to a
major environmental and economic damages this issue is completely inconsistent with the
view of sustainable development. to reduce these damages in addition of technical and
economic parameters we should involved environmental parameters so this has led to an
increase of information, reviews and other issues and phase Zero project will be more
complicate therefore, for applying these parameters new technologies such as remote sensing
and geographic information system (GIS) was used so we could prepared data in order to be
more accurate and faster for designing path and use them. This issue is researched and by
many researchers reviewed and is approved. For example Jacobs and Voung in 2001 they
could very good incorporate environmental parameters by using GIS for designing safety path
for fast trains in Mite Soaye of united states of America so find stable and safety path and also
in Iran research and analysis done and some parameters like land use, slope and soil has been
studied. in this paper we try in addition to the above issues, some other important issues like:
land subsidence, under ground water level, land use and vegetation, faults and etc also in the
area of remote sensing study has shown that some of the lands affected subsidence
phenomenon due to groundwater extraction for irrigation of orchards and farmland. so by the
help of modern techniques of In SAR by using satellite imagery and radar zone and range of
subsidence rates were obtained in the region. In this paper for the first time areas of affected
by subsidence were used as one of the parameters used to determining variants because lack
of attention to these issues cause huge economic losses and irreparable environmental.
purpose of this paper are:

1. Recognize environmental factors affecting to determine railway track

2. considering environmental parameters in order to minimize the environmental damage

caused by railway construction and to achieve maximum safety on the road

3. Identification and use of geographic information systems capabilities

Describes the study area

The study area in the northern province of Kerman and located in the area between
Rafsanjan and Zarand. Province Kerman with important environmental features like faults,
abundant agricultural land, vegetation, forests, subsidence areas and etc is among the most
sensitive environmental areas.
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Parameters affecting the rail routing

In order to achieve the research objectives at first influential parameters were identified in
railway routing. This order was done by environmental study of rail and according to the
routing methods with customary methods. After initial identification collect data of these
parameters or were prepared and were stored in the appropriate format for use in GIS.

The data used in the study

Land use: Maps of land use and vegetation provide much of the required information for
planners to adoption of correct decision. For the railway routing we should pay special
attention to covering ground. Path should be pass from area of that the lowest cost and in
terms of environmental has the minimum damages. By using of Land cover maps can identify
this areas and achieve to the goal. Land use map was prepared by Forest, Rangeland and
Watershed organization by the help of satellite images landsat7 and was provided. Figure (1)
shows land use map of the study area. Every parameters of this map will be different priorities
in terms of the path so that these parameters will be defined in the next chapter.

figure1: map of the Land use and vegetation of the study area
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

slope: One of the important parameters in determining the path is slope. Slope limit
longitudinal of rails is much less than the ways and in areas with high slope should do
embankment earthworks and tunnels to reduce the slope therefore should cross the path from
least slope zone. The gradient map extracted from the DEM and for the combining layers
were used in the next section. Figure(2) shows slope map of study areas.

figure(2): slope map of study areas

faults: Fault could be dangerous and accident-prone in an area because displacements

caused by tectonic activity around it will damage to road infrastructure the zero phase of
project should be considered fault and railroad should be away from faults as possible as it
could. Faults extracted from geological map 1:100,000 scale. Figure (3) shows map of the
study area faults.
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

figure(3): map of the study area faults.

Subsidence: according to the definition given by UNESCO this phenomenon is collapse

or subsidence of land surface that occur due to different reason in the large scale. Typically,
these so-called is called to downward vertical movement of the earth's surface that can have
horizontal vector. Although subsidence phenomenon occurring gradually but harmful of that
is not less than other phenomena such as earthquakes. Subsidence phenomena will seriously
damage to the streets, bridges, force transmission lines, railroads and buildings. Particularly
damaging in the case of Ways, roads and Embankment Dams is more because they have
extent of the large longitudinal. because of their difference in subsidence rates in different
parts of them is causing damage. Subsidence also causes changes in the hydrologic
characteristics of the area, including surface underground water , direction and velocity of
groundwater. In the past don't pay attention to the area of affected by subsidence but given the
extensive studies conducted shows that this lack of attention can lead to irreparable damage
especially the railroads that has long length. Therefore subsidence affected areas with the help
of a new technique called InSAR data were extracted with the help of ENVISAT ASAR
satellite images. InSAR techniques across all terrestrial and satellite methods as the most
effective method to identify areas affected by displacement and measure the displacement rate
in a broad coverage with high spatial resolution and accuracy of 1 cm is considered. In this
method of radar images taken at two different times from one region are used and calculating
the phase difference between the two images the surface of earth displacement is calculated.
Readers can refer to ([3-5]) to learn more about the techniques and the use of InSAR
technique to measure surface subsidence. Figure 4 shows a map of the ground subsidence.
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Figure 4: Map of subsidence area of the study

Geology : Particularly to reach the providing required standard of safe and convenient
movement of trains the quality of bed rail lines is important. Bed rail should have the
following features:

 be able to pass freight and passenger trains in the safety of design speeds
 able to tolerance of Heavy axial loads that enters by the freight trains
 Minimize future maintenance costs

In order to study the geological context for understanding the stability and strength of the
stone is important railroad. To know the status of geology of region geological maps in scale
1:250000 geological organizations related to The digital format and evaluated accordingly.
Figure 5 shows the geological map of the study area.
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Figure 5 : geological map of the study area.

Groundwater levels : what ever the depth of groundwater is less the path body parameters
(like pavement design) are more susceptible to degradation. Due to the high density of water
resources taken annual statistics is not possible. Therefore, the each study area some water
resource to selectively includes a number of water wells, canals, are considered and at
specified intervals (eg, monthly), the discharge is measured. Also the network of observation
wells in a study area and groundwater level fluctuations are measured.

Information about the region such as wells, their location and ... Were prepared by the
Regional Water. Depth information of the annual number of wells Pyzomtryk preparation and
after the analysis of data, loss of groundwater, groundwater fluctuations over time was
determined that the study area includes information on groundwater observation of 886 wells.
Of these 110 wells were studied in the study area. Location of wells is shown in Figure (6).
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Figure (6): Location of wells in the study area

Effective parameters in the routing of rail way

An important aspect of the zero phase of the project is type and how rate of parameters are
available. The most objection to the economic rate is that may be you lose some unique
environmental source. In other word this rate doesn't any attention to these unique source. Or
even we don't pay attention to some important environmental parameters such as land
subsidence can sometimes irreparable damage brought. Therefore, after the identification of
environmental parameters were investigated weighting.

Evaluation of environmental parameters are not easy because these values are the basis of
qualitative. Therefore, in order to avoid errors caused by lack of experience Comments of a
group of experts was used to. value of each of these parameter values in Table 1 are shown.
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

table1 : value of each of these parameter

value Effective parameters in

the routing of rail way

01 Subsidence

9 Land use

8 faults

7 slope

6 Geology

6 Distance from wells

After evaluate each layer is time to evaluate Substrate. Weights within each layer are also
done with expertise these weights are shown in pictures (1) to (6).

Necessity of decisions about choosing the optimal route is a combination of comprehensive

information. Therefore, after the weighted inner layers, the relative weight given to each of
the layers it is necessary to point out that layers, on the basis of their disproportion for the
passage of the variants were weighted. In other words, more weight was given to the
parameters that are not suitable for road construction. Then layer in Arc GIS software
according to the relative weights were combined with each other. The output layer of this step
is a combined data layer from previous data layer where the contents of the output map is
divided into areas of different risk. Figure(7) shows the output layer.
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

Figure(7): shows separate regions in terms of risk. numbers 1 to 5 respectively shows low to
high risk, for road construction.

Figure (7) shows areas that is permitted in terms of environmental parameters for selected
variants. Without having such a good strategic map selection of variants will take so much
time and some times has error. Line shown in the figure shows one of the variant with the
help of GIS that could be choose.

As might be expected, and in the figure(7) shown subsidence areas have high risk. This
subject shows importance of checking this information layer in the zero phase studies. The
lack of attention to this issue can lead to huge economic losses to the road body. Vegetation
and forest areas are also important because removing vegetation resources will lead to
irreparable environmental damage.

Conclusions:

 Due to the diversity and the large number of parameters affect the routing and the
importance of this issue using GIS to analyze large volumes of data with high
accuracy and provides while doing this by hand is very difficult, time consuming and
have errors.
 After studies have shown that land subsidence is the most important parameter
influencing the design unfortunately todays is less attention.
 International Conference on Civil Engineering
Architecture & Urban Sustainable Development
18 &19 December 2013, Tabriz , Iran

checking the environmental parameters in the zero phase affect the stability of the project
and will lead to sustainable development.

References

‫مجیذ "رعایت اصول زیست محیطی‬،‫علی اصغر و مخذوم‬،‫درویش صفت‬،‫احذ‬،‫ ستوده‬-[1]

2831 ، ‫" همایش ژئوماتیک‬GIS ‫در مسیر یابی با استفاده از‬

Spatial Analyst Arc " ‫ امیذ تی تی دژ‬،‫ هومه لطیفی‬،‫ جواد حاجی آبادیان‬-[2]
2833"GIS9.2

[3]- Dehghani, M., Valadan Zouj, M., Entezam, I., Saatchi, S., Shemshaki, A. (2010). Interferometric
Measurements of Ground Surface Subsidence induced by Overexploitation of Groundwater. Journal of
Applied Remote Sensing. Volume 37 (1), 147-156.

[4]- Dehghani, M., Valadan Zouj, M., Entezam, I., Saatchi, S., (2009a). InSAR Monitoring of
Progressive Land Subsidence in Neyshabour; Northeast Iran., Geophysical Journal International (GJI),
178, 47-56,.

[5]- Dehghani, M., Valadan Zouj, M.,Biggs, J., Mansourian A., Parsons, B., Wright, T., (2009b).
RADAR Interferometry Time Series Analysis of Mashhad Subsidence. Journal of International Society
of Remote Sensing (ISRS) , India, 37, 147-156.