The area of Egypt is 1.01041 million km 2 and the inhabited area (Valley and Delta) represents 79.29 thousand km2 which means that only 7.85% of the total area is used. The remaining space of the Egypt is desert and it represents more than 90.9% of Egypt. Their special feature and distinctive properties are quite different from the Valley, which requires study of the General characteristics of the Egyptian desert and development possibilities and limitations, because the inhabited from area (the valley and delta) completely saturated and groaning many problems. That's why desert (Eastern Desert - Western Desert - the Sinai Peninsula) ) is the scope of any development process or urban extension as it could play an important role in solving many of the problems at the national and regional level, including potential and untapped resources.
But Due to the current situation in Egypt We find that there is a problem in the resettlement of economic activities commensurate with the nature of the sites that are indigenization, which could affect the environment or on the practicing of the activity itself. This leads us to the conclusion that the traditional ways of dealing with this kind of decisions is a poor and cannot be relied upon in case we want to make informed decisions with a positive impact on the current situation in Egypt, This directs us to the modern technology that provide support in decision-making, In this field of study we can turn to the GIS because of its extraordinary ability in dealing with a huge amount of information and. spatial data.
Accordingly this research aims to build model to select sites for urban development in desert areas and specifies the activity that the Urban areas will depend upon, accordance the natural characteristics of the area so that this form suitable for application on any Egyptian desert region through to enter properties of desert region (Climatic characteristics, Geographical characteristics, Topographical characteristics, Hydrological characteristics, geological characteristics .....) Taking into account the installation of social and economic characteristics, the model make some calculations based on the Settlement activities requirements and give results identify suitable sites for the establishment of Urban communities based on a particular activity (agricultural - tourist - Industrial -), this model will be built using GIS 9.3 ESRI-ArcGis.
Alexandria region (Alexandria, Beheira and Matrouh Governorate) Has been selected as a study area to apply the model , because it occupies almost the half area of the Western Desert and has wide variety in desert environments, the application ends with extracted suitable sites for development in the region and specify the type of the most suitable activity resettled everywhere in these places, so that this result Represent source of support in case we make any development decisions in this region, or in any other regions that will be applied to the model. |
