The Islamic museumwaserectedin1896.The buildingis situatedin theheart of Cairo (capitalof Egypt) and holdsmarvellous Islamic antiquities and priceless ancient hand-writing andrare books.Recently, a restoration scheme has been planned to secure the old building which suffers from weakened foundations.In addition, the wooden roofs will be replaced by concrete ones and an extra floor will be integrated into the building.Unfortunately, the architecture construction charts were neither available nor obtainable.Therefore, the structure of the foundations and the base walls of the building had to be outlined. At the time of construction, three major fundamental wall designs were dominant and were to be considered during the work approach. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and dipole^dipole resistivity imaging have been integrated to (define the structure of the foundation walls ofthe building. A Ramac2 system connected to a 500 MHz antenna has been utilized for conducting the GPR survey. In addition, a Terrameter SAS 1000 single channel device has been used for performing the resistivity profiles. At accessible spaces around the building GPR and resistivity profiles were obtained. The GPR analysis has revealed the depth of the foundation walls to be about 0.9 m from the ground surface with a width close to 0.6 m.The wall design is close to a straight wall style.Furthermore, the analysis ofthe dipole^dipole resistivity measurements has matched the geology of the area, where subsoil anomalies may be due to the scattered limestone blocks that occur in the area. Moreover, the foundation walls have resistivity values that fall into the range of fractured limestone or limestone blocks. A step-wise or inclined foundation wall style hasnot beenindicatedthroughtheparallelresistivityprofiles

No abstract

A B S T R A C TThe phenomenon of seawater invasion is a very common and widespread environmental problem that is present in the majority of Egyptian coastal aquifers. Saltwater intrusion may occur due to human activities and by natural events such as climate change and sea level rise. El Qaa plain is a structural depression trending NNW-SSE, parallel to the main rift system of the Gulf of Suez. The Quaternary aquifer in El Qaa plain is the main source for water supply in this region. So, this study has been conducted to shed more light on the description of the subsurface section and marking out the invasion of seawater to this aquifer at the northern part of El Qaa plain. In this concern, transient electromagnetic data were measured at 52 stations arranged along 2 parallel profiles, 10 km apart, trending NE-SW to cross the major course of the plain and to be approximately perpendicular to the coast line of the Suez Gulf. In addition, information from a nearby borehole was used to confirm the results of transient electromagnetic data interpretation. Two apparent resistivity pseudosections and two geoelectrical cross-sections were constructed along the selected profiles. Investigation of these sections revealed that four geoelectrical layers could be detected in the shallow subsurface medium at the studied area and the Quaternary aquifer has been affected by seawater invasion at the western and middle parts. Besides, three faults striking approximately NW-SE parallel to the major track of the plain were inferred from this study. These faults may be controlling the groundwater accumulation and flow in this area.

Geophysical tools such as electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and shallow seismic (both P-wave seismic refraction and Multi-channel Analysis of Surface Waves (MASW)) are interesting techniques for delineating the subsurface configurations as stratigraphy, structural elements, caves and water saturated zones. The ERT technique is used to delineate the contamination, to detect the buried objects, and to quantify some aquifer properties. Eight 2-D (two dimensional) electrical resistivity sections were measured using two different configurations (dipole-dipole and Wenner). The spread length is of 96 m and the electrodes spacing are 2, 4 and 6 m, respectively to reach a depth ranging from 13 to 17 m. The results indicate that, the subsurface section is divided into main three geo-electrical units, the first is fractured marl and limestone which exhibits high resistivity values ranging from 40 to 300 ohm m. The second unit is corresponding to marl of moderate resistivity values and the third unit, which is the deeper unit, exhibits very low resistivity values corresponding to clayey marl. The fourth layer is marly clay with water. The presence of clay causes the most geotechnical problems. Fourteen shallow seismic sections (both for P-wave and MASW) were carried out using spread of 94 m and geophone spacing of 2 m for each P-wave section. The results demonstrate that the deduced subsurface section consists of four layers, the first layer exhibits very low P-wave velocity ranging from 280 to 420 m/s, the second layer reveals P-wave velocity ranging from 400 to 1200 m/s, the third layer has P-wave velocity ranging from 970 to 2000 m/s and

No abstract