Tourism

Over the course of last week, the pilot of the CityFlows project took place in Park Güell. The project aims to show how using new technologies can help in the management of places of great interest to tourists. So it focuses on studying technologies which, while respecting personal details, enable information to be gathered on such aspects as mobility flows in these specific locations and on how this information can be processed to draw conclusions from it.

The project has tested three complementary technologies in three different pilot tests around Europe, in the cities of Milan, Delft and Barcelona, and integrated the results into a support system for taking decisions on high-occupancy spaces known as CM-DSS (Crowd Management Decision Support System) in order to assess the results and suggest improvements in planning and management.

Through the more technological pilot test carried out in Barcelona, more specifically in Park Güell, the CityFlows consortium has developed equipment with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, and rolled out infrastructure for connecting it to the CM-DSS.

During the test week, the RFID readers were placed in specific locations around the park and visitors were given RFID tags at the two main entrances. That way it was possible to gather a representative sample of Park visitors, taking two groups into account. Local visitors were considered in the first group, among others, local residents and users of the cultural benefits platform Gaudir més, and just tourists in the second group. In all, approximately 1,200 people took part.

The aim of the pilot test was to get more information on visitor flows and routes and to be able to extract data on mobility patterns in the Park. To that end, the CM-DSS will process the information and provide the results.

The Municipal Institute of Information Technology has led this pilot test, in collaboration with the project coordinator and members TU Delft, UPC and CIMNE respectively, and also the external body IMAZ.

This pilot project would not have been possible without the collaboration of Barcelona City Council, Barcelona de Serveis Municipals and especially the Park Güell workers and visitors, neighbours and tourists who took part voluntarily.