Type: article
Abstract: The purpose of this work is the development of an automatic procedure for the analysis and optimization of hiking paths.The paper verifies its application to the mountain trails network of the Trentino, alpin region of Italy, where the digital trail map of the Tridentine Alpinist Society (Società degli Alpinisti Tridentini, SAT) is available.The map is provided in the KML, SHP and GPX formats with Open Database License (OdbL) license.The availability of this map allows the analysis of the topological features and environmental aspects of the corresponding network graph.Moreover, it is possible to implement path optimization tools, selecting distance, walking time and upward slope as cost.The evaluation of the traveling times for each path is carried out according to the Schweizer Wanderwege formula, which links walking speed to the slope, but with the possibility of adding reductive coefficients of the speed as a function of the accidentality of the terrain.The estimated time for each trail has been verified by comparing it to the empirical travel time published by the SAT.After modifying the network topology by breaking lines at intersection points, it has been possible to compute the traveling time for each trail section.Traveling times in the two directions, length and altitude difference has been associated to each trail section, to be used as "costs" in path minimization.Points of interest have been added to the network to be used as nodes, i.e. points of departure and / or arrival of routes or intermediate stop points.These points have been associated with relative "cost" values of the average stay times.Simulations have also been done on the network graph in order to identify the minimum paths: starting from a parking, touching some significant points (shelters, mountain huts, panoramic sites, ...) and returning to the initial parking lot.The whole procedure has been automated in GRASS GIS through a Python script.Estimated traveling times are in good agreement with empirical times and the network analysis and path minimization have shown that the minimum cost path can be very different depending on the cost choice.In particular, for mountain paths, shortest paths are different whether the distance, the traveling time or the total height difference is minimized.
Authors: Zatelli, Paolo, Frontuto, Vito, Besana, Angelo
Institution: University of Trento
Language: English
Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7015627877