Geological feasibility and slope stability analysis under GIS environment for rail route alignment

Rail Route Alignment in hilly terrain is a difficult task to implement as several natural constraints poses threat to the safety and stability of the alignment. The conventional methods followed to find out the final location survey or the feasibility analysis for alignment is time taking consuming. Some times, due to inaccessibility of the terrain it becomes impossible to carry out such works. The construction works in hilly terrain, which are associated with the proposed alignment, are not same as carried out in plane areas due to a vast contrast between the two areas. Different geological structures such as faults, thrusts, synclines and anticlines are a big problem to carry out normal construction practices. Thus for a safe and stable railway route in the unstable hilly areas, it is required to carry out the feasibility analysis of the proposed alignment to assist the policy makers for a successful implementation of the alignment. In the present work Remote Sensing and GIS has been successfully used to carry out geological feasibility and slope stability analysis for rail route alignment work.