A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Advanced Technologies

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2000

In general, any geographic phenomena are visually depicted as 'static' map with 'static' spatial model. This work presents how the time variable can be combined to give more information to the spatial model and how to implement the dynamic map with dynamic spatial model. The recreation opportunity spectrum (ROS) framework is a method to identify the tourism carrying capacity (CC). It is modeled spatially as well as dynamically. The simulation of traveling of tourists is implemented based on parameters such as route for tourist, speed of car and stopping time in each facility from field observation. The questionnaire for tourist was proposed and used to collect necessary data such as number of tourists and time spending. The National Park plan was collected to create base map. The statistic and random method is applied for car simulation. ROS base map is created applying cartographic modeling with weight overlay method. Three settings are layered and weight scores defined including physical, managerial and social. The physical classes can be defined based on remoteness and human modifications, managerial classes is defined belong to the park's zoning and the social classes is based on encounter norms. Alternatively, the social setting is designed as dynamic variable that collects the parameters from the simulation. ROS class maps are generated by changing of social setting each time stamp. The dynamic spatial model for ROS is created using Avenue programming and interactively interfaced as a module in Arc View GIS. User can define input parameters to the simulation and time stamp for map generating. The dynamic spatial model is effectively implemented to offer the information fulfilling both time and space dimension. The information obtained from the analysis in this work will be useful to control the impact of tourism on each facility of the National park and provide more comfort to the tourist.