Zones of climatic suitable for environmental tourism development in the cities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia using Gis

Abstract

The study aims to identify the climatic comfort zones in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and to evaluate the suitability of the climate for ecotourism using the thermal discomfort index and the tourism climate index. Climate elements such as temperature and humid-ity are essential components for developing the domestic ecotourism sector in the Kingdom. The study methodology proceeded from reviewing the literature, then collecting the necessary climate data to apply the climate comfort indicators from satellites for the period from 2002 to 2022 AD, to processing and preparing the data to derive the layers necessary to apply the mathematical equations for the indicators. The results of the study showed that there are six zones of climate comfort according to Thom's classi-fication, starting with the zone of cold comfort and ending with the zone of dangerous stress. The results of deriving the daytime comfort index layer showed nine categories in which the areas characterized by climate comfort are concentrated in the north and southwest of the Kingdom, and the levels of climate comfort are lower in the west and southeast of the Kingdom. The results of the classification of the tourism climate index showed the presence of four regions for tourism, the first of which is characterized by a good tourism climate in which the values of the tourism climate index exceeded 60%, and the last zone appears in the areas characterized by an unsuitable climate for tourism with an index value between 40 - 30%.

Keywords

thermal discomfort, daytime climate comfort, daily climate comfort, tourism climate.

How to Cite

Al-Rehaili, A. (2024). Zones of climatic suitable for environmental tourism development in the cities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia using Gis. Journal of Umm Al-Qura University for Social Sciences, Vol16(2),pp 1-22. https://doi.org/10.54940/ss28998614

License

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