Initial Design and Features of an Augmented Reality System for Urban Park Touring and Management
Konstantinos P. Ferentinos, Yannis Stavrakas, Harry Nakos, Kostis Pristouris, Myrto Barda
Journal of Intelligent Computing, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2020.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6025/jic/2020/11/1/1-11
Link: http://www.dline.info/jic/fulltext/v11n1/jicv11n1_1.pdf
Abstract:
Urban parks and open green areas are important attractions of environmental interest to city residents and
visitors. Careful and well-targeted promotion of these areas, not only enhances the importance of their existence in the urban
space, but at the same time can assist in the development of alternative forms of â€œgreen tourismâ€, and towards the direction of
environmental awareness among citizens, which is particularly important nowadays and crucial for the future of the planet.
New technologies are a key tool in enhancing the experience of touring urban parks, as they can make the tour much more
attractive, highlighting interesting information about the flora and fauna of the park, as well as various other points of
interest. At the same time, they can help guide the visitor inside relatively large parks, and easily identify his/her paths, thus
highlighting areas of the park that would otherwise be neglected. They can also assist park managers in organizing events,
thus solving one of the key operating problems mainly of large-scale urban parks, which is the failure to exploit their entire site
due to reduced or problematic accessibility. This paper presents the initial design methodology and the main features of an
integrated system that comprises an augmented reality mobile application for visitors of urban parks, and a corresponding
park management web application for the managers of such park. Through the mobile app, an attractive, interactive touring
environment will be created which will highlight the environmental and historical interest of those sites. At the same time, the
web application will receive multimedia data from the users and will automatically collect anonymous data that may be useful
to park managers to improve the visitorsâ€™ touring experience and to better highlight the advantages of visiting such parks.