An Analysis of Public Boys’ High School Location Using GIS: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Case Study

Abstract

The research study area is the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Jeddah high schools are separated by gender due to cultural background. In 2018, a research was conducted related to public girls’ high schools (Belarem et al., 2018) and the research neglected boys’ public high schools which is considered a gap in the study. In addition, the emphasis of this research is on the male population because it is more than the female population in the city which will require more schools for boys in the future. Moreover, and from an urban planner point of view, public schools are part of the city infrastructure and the quality of physical, social, and academic of schools is part of the quality of the city. This research is to study Public Boys’ High school physical location distribution and population accessibility to these schools using Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis tools such as euclidian and network analysis. Furthermore, city historical Landsat imagery in the last 30 years to be used to study the city urban sprawl(population) to estimate future urban sprawl (population) direction in the city. Such analysis will enable urban planners and educators to come together to determine future school siting for better quality.