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The North Railway is one of the longest railway lines in the world, extending for 2750 km from the Riyadh region to Al-Jawf Province through many diverse topographies, including valleys where direct runoff is generated that cross the existing hydraulic protection installations on the railtrack. Direct runoff flows in quantities that exceed the capacity of existing drainage installations and cause several types of damage, owing to the nature of the drainage basins and the impact of changing natural factors and human errors. To ensure the safety of the design of hydraulic drainage installations, this indicates the need for hydrological studies of drainage basins, especially those that include important strategic facilities such as railway lines. In this study, the hydrological modeling of four subdrainage basins (No. 6, 7, 13, and 14) within Wadi Malham was applied and evaluated to determine if the drainage installations can accommodate the direct peak runoff flow. According to the results, the peak flows of 8.9 m³/s for basin No. 7 and 18.2 m³/s for basin No. 13 indicate that they are unable to handle the direct peak runoff flow from the designed storm for a return period of 100 years. The other two basins are able to pass through the peak flow. Based on the findings of this study, we recommend adding an opening for culvert C0400 in basin No. 7 and adding two openings for C0244 in basin No. 13 to accommodate the peak flow. Full article

The North Train Railway in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) extends over vast areas, crossing various terrains, including valleys, sand veins, plateaus, and hills. Therefore, the railway was designed and implemented to suit this environmental diversity under the highest safety standards. However, the railway may be subject to hazards for various reasons. In general, the possibility of direct surface runoff disasters increases if there are residential areas and facilities within the boundaries of drainage basins. Therefore, these areas should be studied, and the degree of hazard in drainage basins should be accurately determined. Hence, this study analyzed the degree of risk of 14 drainage basins affecting the North Train Railway within the Wadi Malham drainage basin. The risk degree model was used with eight parameters that have hydrological indications to give an idea of the behavior of direct surface runoff and alter the risk of direct surface runoff. We found that 28.57% of the total basins in the study area have overall score values indicating they are high-risk basins, namely basins 6, 7, 13, and 14. It is recommended to estimate the rainfall depth during different return periods, analyze soil permeability and land use classification in the study area, and apply hydrological modeling of drainage basins, which contributes to estimating the volume and peak of direct surface runoff in such arid and semi-arid environments that do not contain hydrometric stations to monitor the runoff. Full article