MANAGING VISITOR ACCESS TO PROTECTED MOUNTAIN AREAS

 

The project aims to identify approaches for the sustainable management of protected mountain areas, by defining strategies of visitor access that preserve the environmental quality of such areas while ensuring adequate recreational opportunities. In particular, the project focuses on the definition of tools that allow administrators and park managers to explore the likely environmental and recreational effects of different access policies before their actual implementation. In this respect, the work relies on the combination of various modelling techniques, including stated preferences, agent-based models and optimization, to assess the preferences of visitors, explore the effect of different access policies and eventually define optimal management strategies. 

The project, which specifically analyzes visitor access to the Dolomites UNESCO World Heritage Site, has five specific objectives as follows: 1) map the wildness of natural areas; 2) assess the current and expected behavior of vsitors; 3) simulate tourist movements by means of an agent-based model; 4) assess the sustainability of management decisions by means of optimization techniques; 5) develop decision support tools, guidelines and recommendations.

 

   target audience: 

 

- local

- international

- academics

- practitioners

- application of technologies

- application of technics

- future research