Big data in tourism monitoring and valorization of cultural ecosystem services in forest areas within the Warsaw and Vienna metropolitan areas

Project description

The project is implemented within the framework of the Lead Agency Procedure collaboration, in the Weave program, which received funding under the “OPUS 22” competition.
Ecosystem services provided by forest areas can be divided into three groups: provisioning, regulatory and cultural. In areas of urban agglomerations, cultural services are of great importance, among which is the possibility of rest and recreation in forest areas. This is a result, among other things, of the fact that urban residents, due to the small amount of greenery and the limited number of parks and squares, are looking for places where they can commune with nature. Such natural places are urban and suburban forests, which have become a place for daily passive and active recreation. Heavy pressure from recreational use can have a negative impact on forest ecosystems. One way to offset the potential negative effects of recreation and tourism is to have information about the public’s preferences, the times and places where tourism takes place and its intensity. This information can provide a basis for making decisions on the placement and adaptation of infrastructure for different user groups, channeling tourist traffic to fit a specific user group, or designating socially significant forests.

Project goals

The project focuses on the potential for the provision of cultural ecosystem services (CES) by urban and suburban forest areas in the two metropolitan areas of Warsaw and Vienna.In addition, public demand for such services will be determined, as well as elements related to recreational mobility (hot spots, directions of movement) will be studied. For mapping and valorization of the CES, the project plans to use the latest technological solutions and Big Data from multiple sources. Among the data resources are: socialigeographic information data (e.g. from Flickr, Twitter); open spatial data from Copernicus, OGD Vienna projects;surveys, GPS data. Therefore, an important goal of the project is also to explore the potential and limitations of Big Data in CES analysis. The project will use the advanced cyber-infrastructure of the “Center for Scientific Geospatial Analysis and ComputingSatellite (CENAGIS)” to perform analyses.

Characteristics of the project

Among the expected results of the projects are: identification of factors influencing recreational use of forest lands; valorization of CES; mapping of the temporal and spatial distribution of activities on forest lands; identification of the directions of the public’s movement from their place of residence to selected forest complexes; development of a methodology for processing and analyzing Big Data in their use for CES purposes. The activities envisaged in the project are expected to serve to better understand the behavior and needs of the public in terms of recreation on forest lands, to identify areas with the highest potential CES that should be preserved, and to give tools for decision-making in forest land management and spatial planning.The project will be conducted by an interdisciplinary team of scientists from Poland and Austria, who will combine their knowledge of social sciences, forestry, recreation monitoring with geoinformation and Big Data analysis.

Scope of IBL participation

The Forest Research Institute is the Leader in the consortium established to implement the project.

Project contractors

Department of Geomatics

Partners

Warsaw University of Technology (Partner)

BOKU – University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (Leader of the Austrian part of the project)