Where to hike? Mobile application for guiding tourists in the Bükkalja Region, Hungary

Hiking is one of the most popular outdoor sports activities in Hungary. Despite not having many mountainous areas, a wide network of hiking trails crosses the country’s landscapes. As online tourist maps and thematic mobile applications become more and more popular among hikers, the role of paper-based, analogue tourist maps decreases. However, no thematic application has been issued that contains detailed surveyed (or crowdsourced) data on attractions or the natural circumstances (coverage, difficulty) for a certain area in Hungary yet. Nature tourism in the Bükkalja Region, Hungary is mostly based on geological-geomorphological features that are completed with cultural facilities. The length of the hiking trail system is more than 370 km in the examined 354 km2 large sample area. We have developed an OS mobile application that offers guidance for tourists based on four basic pillars: the physical condition of the trails, the attractions along a trail, dangerous trail segments and hiking trail marking quality. These pillars are visualized with an OpenLayers-based online map. The result is a multi-purpose smartphone application. Its main aim is to offer a planning platform for tourists by examining the difficulty of the trails and designating the attractions to visit. There is information on the most important attractions of the area: cultural and geoscientific sites are also presented. We also encourage users to report changes to the map data content via the crowdsourcing menu. These comments and remarks are continuously checked for validity and the database is modified with the use of them.

Interpretation in Ásbyrgi: Communicating with National Park Visitors in Iceland

Iceland has experienced rapid increases in tourism in recent years. This growth earns economic applause, but can come at considerable environmental cost. As Iceland’s unique environment is a drawcard for many tourists, careful management of destinations to ensure a sustainable environment is critical. The Icelandic Government is aware of the need for effective destination management and planning to ensure a sustainable future for tourism development, and the need to couple this with visitor compliance. It is a development that cannot be divorced from the need for environmental sustainability, and responsibility for this lies with all tourism stakeholders. One management tool to assist with such responsibility and compliance in tourism is interpretation: creating and delivering messages to visitors that enhance not only their satisfaction with an experience but also their understanding of it. This paper is based on an evaluation of visitors’ experiences and managers’ perceptions, as is necessary to ensure visitor satisfaction, while determining how best to maintain a sustainable environment. By observing and interviewing visitors, guides, rangers, and managers at Ásbyrgi in the northernmost part of Vatnajökull National Park, Iceland, we were able to discover what sort of information park visitors want to receive, what park managers want to convey, and the preferred way to deliver that information. Overall, most visitors and guides were satisfied with the interpretation in Ásbyrgi and preferred information provided verbally by guides or rangers over other types, such as on signs or in electronic format. Visitors want information about the unique geology and cultural history, as well as directional instructions for hiking trails. Managers want to create an accessible space in which visitors comply with instructions about safety and environmental sustainability. These findings can assist tourism management in Ásbyrgi, and other nature-based destinations, particularly in terms of sustainability of the natural environment.

Tourism, Scientific, and Didactic Potential of the Ultrabasic-Alkaline Intrusion in Afrikanda with Perovskite Mineral (Kola Peninsula, N Russia) and of the Related Built Heritage

The present article is an example of research on the tourism, scientific, and teaching potential of the ultrabasic-alkaline intrusion with perovskite minerals in Afrikanda (Kola Peninsula, North Russia) and the possibility of its development as part of a local geopark site. A proposal to create a protected zone in this site, to expose sites of geological, natural, historical, and tourist interest is presented. Didactic routes and locations of geo-point visitors are proposed. Currently, there are numerous quarries and other mining objects of high historical, technical, and geological value. In the vicinity, there is a trough lake and post-glacial formations that can supplement knowledge about this region and add interest to would-be visitors. The remains of a historical camp for workers and miners are also visible in the intrusion area. In the vicinity of Afrikanda village, there is an international railroad line to Murmansk and St. Petersburg with a working railroad station. The place has high historical and geological potential for tourists and very rare and interesting mineralization. The last is a key value. The location is associated with 30 alkaline intrusions in NE Fennoskandia. There are opportunities to create a museum with a park where, with relatively little funding (most of the existing infrastructure buildings are in good condition), the intrusions can be shown to tourists. We proposed a conservation area with exposures, quarries, mine infrastructure, and historical sites, along with the location of geosites, hiking trails, and a geo-point for visitors. These sites are prospective for the economic revival of Afrikanda village and can protect the unique exposures.

Early Warning of Impending Flash Flood Based on AIoT

According to data from the Earth's Volcano and Geological Disaster Reduction Center, a country like Indonesia has experienced many natural disasters, one of which is flooding. Floods are an annual natural disaster, especially on mountain slopes. Mountainous areas experience more dangerous than floods than the urban areas because they can cause other natural disasters, such as landslides and damage the hiking trails. The steep and winding roads minimize and limit the number of officers working in the mountains. Therefore, flood detection and monitoring equipment is needed. The proposed system based on AIoT technology provides real-time flood analysis so that the authorities can monitor residents around mountainous areas and provide early warning. This research focuses on the flood observation system as an early warning system to effectively monitor the flood-prone mountain slopes in real time while taking into account the cost, time efficiency, and safety measurement. The proposed system design includes the integration of sensors into the microcontroller, and the communication between the posts using LoRa and SIM900 sends data to the cloud server via the Internet. All sensor readings for each post are displayed on the app, and alerts are sent via SMS and the app.

Tourism management in national parks: Šumava and Bayerischer Wald (Bavarian Forest) in the Czech-German borderland

Along the Czech-German border there are four national parks, two Czech and two German, arranged in cross-border ‘pairs’. This article focuses on the southern ‘pair’ formed by the parks of Šumava and Bayerischer Wald (Bavarian Forest). The aim is to evaluate and compare tourism organization in their areas, taking into account selected aspects of management: the network of hiking trails with its related infrastructure, transport accessibility, a typology of tourist centers, as well as directions and destinations of tourist movements. Based on the results, it can be concluded that the availability of geographical space for tourists is much greater in the German than in the Czech national park, and the tourism infrastructure is clearly more extensive there, including the network of tourist trails. This is mainly due to the longer and fairly uninterrupted development of tourism in this area. Šumava National Park can be identified as a model in terms of how to adjust the directions of tourist movements and the layout of the tourist trail network to the needs of natural environment. On the basis of observations in both national parks, it is possible to indicate various solutions that, after appropriate adaptation, may bring benefits to other protected areas.