Sustainable Planning for Environmental Sensitive Area using Multi Criteria\Multi Objective Spatial Analysis: Case Study El-Dabaa, Egypt

Abstract

Planning for a sustainable development of land use requires a set of factors that represent technical, bio-geophysical and socioeconomic aspects. Maintaining balance between society’s demands and environmental conservation requirements is the core issue of sustainable planning of land use. Many tools have been developed to aid in the implementation of such balance, including linear programming, computer simulation and other analysis support tools. Most of these tools are suitable for the economic analysis of sustainable planning in many fields, but in the field of land use allocation, the spatial approach is considered as the key player in academic research and executive proceedings. In this paper, a methodology is developed to solve the problem of land use allocation considering both bio-geophysical and socioeconomic aspects in a pilot area – El Daba’a Region in the north western coast of Egypt. This methodology attempts to develop a set of criteria for each land use by the stakeholder participation. It was used to map the suitability of each land use activity using a multi-criteria approach. The priorities of land use activities were defined by the stakeholder participation and then used to create a multi-objective land use allocation map. The developed map is considered as a base map for sustainable land use processes.