A Geographic Information System for Sustainable Tourism Planning: An integrated approach

This study aims to identify conservation and compatible areas for tourism development in Johor Ramsar site, using spatial modeling in Geographic Information System (GIS). The study describes a methodological approach based on the integrated use GIS and MCDM to identify nature conservation and development priorities among the wetland areas. A set of criteria were defined to evaluate wetlands biodiversity conservation and development. Having defined the criteria, the next step was selecting suitable indicators and variables to measure the selected criteria. Subsequently the criteria were evaluated from conservation and tourism development point of view. These criteria were then ranked using the pair wise comparison technique of MCDM and the results integrated into GIS. Several conservation scenarios are generated so as to simulate different evaluation perspectives. The scenarios are then compared to highlight the most feasible and to propose a conservation and development strategy for the wetlands area. The generation and comparison of conservation and development scenarios highlighted the critical issues of the decision problem.