Comprehensive evaluation of the underground space resources in Xianyang city

With the rapid development of urbanization and the sharp increase in population, urban land is becoming increasingly scarce. The efficient and reasonable development of the underground space is a crucial way to solve the problem of urban diseases, and comprehensive evaluation of urban underground space resources is an important basic task to achieve reasonable planning of the underground space. Adopting Xianyang city as an example, in this paper, we comprehensively evaluated the underground space resources in the main urban area and established evaluation models for the amount of resources available for development, development difficulty, potential value, and comprehensive quality of the underground space. Evaluation indicators, including urban environmental constraints, geological conditions, socioeconomic conditions and many other factors, were determined. With the use of the method of item-by-item elimination of restrictive elements and the analytic hierarchy process for determining the weight of each evaluation index, GIS technology was used to calculate and evaluate the underground space resources (0–30 m) in the main urban area of Xianyang city that could be reasonably developed, as well as the corresponding development difficulty and potential value, and we obtained the underground space that could be reasonably developed under different types of land use in the main urban area of Xianyang city on the basis of the resource quantity and comprehensive quality evaluation results. The results showed that in terms of quantity, the amount of underground space available for development in the main urban area of Xianyang city accounts for approximately 25.11% of the total development amount, and the underground space that could be developed and utilized is approximately 82.3 km(2). The underground space resources that could be developed within a 30 m depth interval in the main urban area reached 2.465 billion m(3), accounting for approximately 79.5% of the total shallow underground space resources, and the potential for development and utilization is enormous. In terms of the comprehensive quality, the highest comprehensive quality level of shallow underground resources is located in the core areas along Renmin Road, Weiyang Road, and Century Avenue, with an area of 21.52 km(2), and the highest comprehensive quality level of subshallow underground resources is located along Renmin Road and Weiyang Road, with an area of 4.37 km(2). The evaluation results could provide high reference value for urban development planning and underground space development and utilization in Xianyang.