Journal of Geographic Information System, 2017, 9, 752-762 http://www.scirp.org/journal/jgis ISSN Online: 2151-1969 ISSN Print: 2151-1950 DOI: 10.4236/jgis.2017.96046 Dec. 28, 2017 752 Journal of Geographic Information System Determination of Potential Runoff Coefficient Using GIS and Remote Sensing Ragab Khalil 1,2 1 Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt 2 Landscape Architecture Department, Faculty of Environmental Design, King AbdulAziz University (KAU), Jeddah, KSA Abstract Flash floods in arid environments are a major hazard feature to human and to the infrastructure. Shortage of accurate environmental data is main reason for inaccurate prediction of flash flooding characteristics. The curve number (CN) is a hydrologic number used to describe the storm water runoff potential for drainage area. This study introduces an approach to determine runoff coeffi- cient in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia using remote sensing and GIS. Remote sensing and geographic information system techniques were used to obtain and pre- pare input data for hydrologic model. The land cover map was derived using maximum likelihood classification of a SPOT image. The soil properties (tex- ture and permeability) were derived using the soil maps published my minis- try of water and agriculture in Saudi Arabia. These soil parameters were used to classify the soil map into hydrological soil groups (HSG). Using the derived in- formation within the hydrological modelling system, the runoff depth was pre- dicted for an assumed severe storm scenario. The advantages of the proposed approach are simplicity, less input data, one software used for all steps, and its ability to be applied for any site. The results show that the runoff depth is di- rectly proportional to runoff coefficient and the total volume of runoff is more than 136 million cubic meters for a rainfall of 103.6 mm. Keywords Potential Runoff Coefficient (PRC), GIS, Remote Sensing, Hydrological Soil Group (HSG), Digital Elevation Model (DEM), Land Use 1. Introduction In arid zones, there is a shortage of data needed for hydrological processes as mentioned by [1]. In these zones flash flooding happened suddenly and affects How to cite this paper: Khalil, R. (2017) Determination of Potential Runoff Coeffi- cient Using GIS and Remote Sensing. Journal of Geographic Information System, 9, 752-762. https://doi.org/10.4236/jgis.2017.96046 Received: December 4, 2017 Accepted: December 25, 2017 Published: December 28, 2017 Copyright © 2017 by author and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access