Identifying Visitor Hotspots in German National Parks Using Anonymized Location Events

Project description

In ecologically sensitive areas such as protected areas, understanding the spatiotemporal behavior of visitors is crucial for the development and implementation of sustainable visitor management strategies. Knowledge of visitor flows is a fundamental prerequisite for identifying zones under high ecological pressure, for devising appropriate conservation strategies and measures, and for developing high-quality visitor experiences—for example, by reducing overcrowding. Previous approaches to collecting visitor data in protected areas (e.g., visitor estimates based on ticket sales or user fees, observations, surveys, and the use of automatic counting devices with sensors) have so far provided only insufficient data regarding total visitor numbers and spatiotemporal visitor flows in protected areas. In addition, they can be associated with drawbacks, such as high acquisition costs and significant personnel requirements. The use of human mobility datasets based on cell phone or smartphone locations can serve as an alternative or supplement to existing visitor monitoring systems in national parks. As part of this project, geolocation events from German users of the wetter.com app were therefore collected to examine visitor flows in all 16 German national parks. Based on the data provided, analyses are conducted—for example, on seasonality and hotspots in the national parks, as well as spatial autocorrelations—to learn more about visitor behavior in the national parks.