Underground City Suitable Site Selection at Bandar Abbas City, Southern Iran

Abstract

Choosing a suitable place to build a new city, including an underground city, is a very sensitive task
because if you do not pay enough attention to your studies, it can have very dangerous financial and
human consequences. In this study, the ANP method was used to select a suitable location for the
structure of an underground city in Bandar Abbas City of Hormozgan Province in southern Iran. For
this issue, 12 factors include the distance from cities, distance from villages, distance from rivers,
distance from dams, distance from flood risk areas, land use, distance from the fault, hazard classmap,
climatic classification, distance from forested areas were considered, and a safe distance from
roadways and avalanche regions. The ANP method’s results revealed that the two requirements of
distance from the fault and distance from the landslide were both met with 11.87% and 10.64%,
respectively which were the most important factors for selecting the location of the underground city.
Criteria map was prepared in GIS, and combined according to the weight of each layer, and the land
suitability map of underground cities was prepared. According to the results, only 6% of the area was
suitable for the construction of an underground city, of which three areas in the northeast, east, and
south of the city can be proposed for the construction of an underground city.

Keywords: ANP, Bandar Abbas, hazards, underground city, zoning