Assessment of rockfall hazard on the steep-high slopes: Ermenek

Ermenek is one of the curious settlement areas because of its topographical features in Karaman (Turkey). The city is located in northern side of the very steep cliffs formed byjointed limestone which are suddenly increased from 1250 m to 1850 m. Moreover, these cliffs having almost 90° slope dip are the main rockfall source areas due to their lithologicalcharacteristics, climatic effects and engineering properties of rock units. Up to now, depending on rockfall events, almost 500 residences were damaged severely, and losses oflives were also recorded in Ermenek. The rockfall phonemon are initiated by discontinuities, lithological changes, weathering and freeze-thaw process in the study area. In this study,extensive fieldwork including determination of location and dimension of hanging, detached and already fallen blocks, a detailed discontinuity survey, description of geological,morphological and topographical characteristics was performed. Besides, rockfall hazard is evaluated by two-dimensional rockfall analyses along 10 profiles. During the rockfallanalyses; run out distance, bounce height, kinetic energy and velocity of various size of blocks for each profiles are determined by using RocFall v4.0 software. The results obtainedfrom rockfall analyses were used to map the areas possible rockfall hazard zones and rockfall source areas were interpreted. According to rockfall analysis, field study and laboratory testing, protective and preventiverecommendations can be suggested for the areas under rockfall threat. But, the most widely- known remedial measures in literature such as trenches, retaining walls (barrier), wiremeshes, cable/streching nets and rock bolting etc. are not sufficient in the study area, due to topographical, atmospheric and lithological features. For these reasons, firstly total evacuation of the danger zone should be applied and then hanging blocks in the reachablelocations can be removed taking safety measures in this area to make it safer for the living people.