ECONOMIC MAP OF SHARKAI GOVERNORATE, EGYPT, USING GIS AND REMOTE SENSING TECHNIQUES

The study area is located in the eastern part of the Nile Delta, with an estimated area of about 4911 km² and a population of about 5,844,000. The research aims to construct a digital database of Sharkai Governorate to support economic development in the fields of agriculture, industry and tourism, based on the topographic maps at a scale of 1:50,000 and Landsat images of the study area. These include digital maps of geology, soil, climate, DEM, irrigation, drainage, roads, population, tourism, education, medical condition, agriculture, industry and services. GIS and remote sensing are applied to create land use maps by supervised classification. The resulting maps show that large areas of desert lands in the cities of Husseiniya, Abouhmad and Belbeis are available for reclamation, cultivation, industrial development and for the establishment of tourism activities.