Assessment and Zonation of Run-out Direction of Rock Falls in Tagh-Ali Mountains Located in the Northeastern of Kerman City

Mountainous regions in the northeastern of Kerman with recreational-residential land use, face severe tectonic activities causing emersion of numerous faulty cliffs, leading to rock fall hazard. When rock fall happens, the main threat posed against exposed elements at risk is to what distance rock pieces will travel, therefore the susceptibility zoning must take into account the region susceptibility to this factor and then through evaluating the run-out of the falls, the zones should be classified into high, medium and low sensitivity. This study tries to prepare susceptibility map as stated earlier. The first step is to identify factors that causes rock fall events, then the importance of each factor in the region has to be determined by using AHP and bivariate statistical method, and finally zoning map of rock falls will be prepared as the most common type of hillside movements. The highest frequency of rock falls in the region have been seen on the faulty slopes, in the N-W and West directions and on 15-30 degrees slopes. The map created by bivariate statistical method contained most rock fall areas and also where rock falls had travels on them, however, due to the manipulation of the region, it is impossible to determine the last place that falling pieces had reached before; so the map does not provide full information. Thus for completing susceptibility map, empirical models such as Reach Angle and Shadow Angle approaches were used to estimate the maximum run-out distance that falling pieces may travel. Based on the final map, recreational roads are at average risk and climbing routes are at high risk.