SCC-CIVIC-PG Track B: A tourism decision support system for Western gateway and natural amenity region communities

整个美国西部的门户和自然舒适区(GNAR)正面临着许多前所未有的挑战，这些挑战威胁着他们的经济、居民的福祉以及蜂拥到这些地区娱乐和恢复活力的游客的健康。最近，新冠肺炎疫情在门户社区领导人中引发了严重担忧，他们担心游客会传播病毒，损害当地居民，并使这些社区有限的医疗资源不堪重负。由于当地经济依赖于户外娱乐者和游客的流动，这些流动的中断可能会对GNAR的社区产生直接和灾难性的后果。该项目的研究团队汇集了社会科学和空间科学的专业知识，能够改变美国西部GNAR社区计划和应对自然灾害和新冠肺炎等危机事件造成的游客流中断的方式。其愿景是开发旅游流量的预测模型和相应的决策支持系统，GNOAR社区可以使用该系统来探索和通报当地的政策决策。该项目将把可公开获得的流动数据整合到一个交互式旅游规划和管理工具中，迅速提高这些数据的能力，以便GNOAR社区能够在自然灾害和危机事件期间规划和管理旅游。通过利用一个成熟的研究团队整合不同的数据集来量化大规模地理范围内旅游流量的数量和空间分布，该项目的数据和模型已经准备好在整个圣胡安县、犹他州-纳瓦霍部落土地的所在地-以及十几个严重依赖旅游业的小社区进行试点。通过利用包容性参与方法来开发基于网络的决策支持系统，该项目将通过智能和互联技术带来对共同产生知识和理解的有效性的新见解。该项目还将促进我们对使用免费和开源网络地图方法进行有效数据可视化的理解；并提供有关整个美国西部GNAR的恢复力指标的新知识。这些见解可用于改进在自然灾害和其他危机事件对当地经济产生复杂反馈的背景下公民参与的方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Gateway and natural amenity regions (GNAR) throughout the Western U.S. are facing a number of unprecedented challenges that threaten their economies, the wellbeing of their residents, and the health of tourists who flock to these areas for recreation and rejuvenation. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to virulent concerns amongst gateway community leaders about tourists spreading the virus, harming local residents, and overwhelming these communities’ limited healthcare resources. With local economies that depend on the flow of outdoor recreationists and tourists, the disruption of those flows can have immediate and disastrous consequences for communities in GNARs. This project's research team brings together expertise from the social and spatial sciences capable of transforming the way GNAR communities across the Western U.S. plan for and respond to interruptions in the flow of tourists brought about by natural disasters and crisis events like the COVID-19 pandemic. The vision is to develop predictive models of tourism flows and a respective decision support system that GNAR communities can use to explore and inform local policy decisions. This project will be integrating publicly available mobility data into an interactive tourism planning and management tool, rapidly accelerating the ability of these data to be used by GNAR communities in their efforts to plan for and manage tourism during natural disasters and crisis events. By leveraging an established research team with demonstrated experience integrating disparate datasets to quantify the volume and spatial distribution of tourism flows across large geographic scales, this project's data and models are ready to be piloted with willing GNAR communities throughout San Juan County, Utah – home to Navajo tribal lands and over a dozen small communities which are heavily reliant on tourism.By utilizing an inclusive engagement approach to develop a web-based decision support system, this project will bring new insights into the efficacy of co-producing knowledge and understanding through smart and connected technologies. The project will also advance our understanding of effective data visualization using free and open source web mapping approaches; and provide new knowledge on resilience indicators for GNARs throughout the Western U.S. These insights can be used to improve approaches to civic engagement in the context of complex feedbacks from natural hazards and other crisis events on local economies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.