The decision for approving Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is
complex due to data uncertainty related to inability to collect the
required data sets on existing baseline conditions. The current practice
of EIA implementation in the city of Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
(KSA), is conducted without a base index for the evaluation of project
alternatives and proposals.
This paper attempts to propose a systematic procedure used for
developing a base index for the city of Jeddah that employs the expertise
of a domain expert in the field of EIA for coastal resort projects to
operate the fuzzy logic approach. This technique handles uncertainty and
offers a practical solution to the evaluation of environmental impacts
that express the quantitative threshold and represent qualitative values
inherited in EIA decision process. In this paper, 30 input variables and
10 indicators are considered in the assessment of the existing baseline
conditions for the city of Jeddah.