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Swelling soil leads to many types of constructional damages, deformations, and failures in the constructions’ roads, shoulders, and foundations. Depending on the amount of swell, they can be insignificant, moderate, or massive. This paper presents a method for swelling soil stabilization by adding rice husk powder (RHP) in variable percentages of 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 by weight of dry soil. The properties of swelling soil stabilization were investigated by various lab tests such as consistency limits (plastic limit, liquid limit, and plasticity index), swelling potential, swelling pressure, free swelling, and free swell index. The swelling soil was also mineralogically examined using X-ray diffraction of clay mineralogy. This stabilization reduced the plasticity from 56% (extremely high plasticity) to 4.5% (low plasticity). Swelling potential (S) and swelling pressure (SP) decreased by 48% to 45.5, 44.7, and 34.6%, from 1003 kN/m2 to 800, 653, and 489 kN/m2 for the partial replacement of the soil by 5%, 10%, and 15% RHP, respectively. The results show that the present approach is very efficient for improving the swelling soil properties and that the optimal amount of added RHP of the swelling soil is 15%. It will also be a database aimed at reducing construction risks in the future.

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Major national development projects have been accomplished in Egypt, particularly around the Gulf of Suez -Sinai region. These include construction of national industrial projects, roads, ports, power station, mineral exploration, beach and village's tourist construction. The aim of this study is to assess and map the seismic activity at the southwestern section of Sinai, Egypt. In the present work, remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques are applied using satellite images, topographical, geological and other ancillary geological data. GIS data integration and analysis indicated that the area is threatened to environmental seismotectonic hazard. These depend on the geological, local seismic activity and the structure analyses of data that are extracted from remote sensing and geo-references data. The structural lineaments analysis data extracted from enhanced Landsat 8 (OLI) image showed that major trends of seismic activity is strongly reduced along the segment fault system of the Gulf of Suez and Gulf of Aqaba. The main characteristics of the seismtectonics of the study area are investigated based on the geological data and seismic activity using the recently recorded data by the Egyptian National Seismic Network (ENSN), in the period between 1904-2005. Accordingly, the assessment of the seismic activity hazard was taken into consideration through identification of the sources of events. Almost all of these events (91.75%) were micro earthquakes and about 8.25% had small measurable magnitudes (4.4 > ML >=3.0). The statistical analyses and geospatial mapping are carried out to extracted structural lineaments and seismic activities. The integrated map of the seismotectonic is constructed and showing the distribution sites of the hazards anomalies. The distribution of seismic activity pattern and previously mentioned data analysis for the study area clearly showed the urgent need for an assessment and rehabilitation program to mitigate geo-hazard environmental in existing structures.