یک سیستم پشتیبانی تصمیم گیری مکانی مبتنی بر GIS برای گردشگران پارک ملی بزرگ کوه های اسموکی

Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) is filled with an abundance of ecological diversity, historical significance, and recreational opportunities for visitors to explore and experience. The wide range of potential activities available in the park also present a major challenge for park visitors to plan activities that will better meet their preferences and constraints. With the large amounts of spatial and non-spatial data associated with the diverse resources and activities in the park, it is a logical choice to use geographic information systems (GIS) for storing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing the data. Nevertheless, GIS functions alone are insufficient to facilitate activity planning for park visitors. This paper presents a GIS-based spatial decision support system (SDSS) application that integrates GIS functions and SDSS designs with easy-to-use graphic user interfaces to help visitors of GSMNP choose and plan their activities more effectively to match their personal preferences and constraints.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) is a national treasure filled with an abundance of ecological diversity, historical significance, and recreational opportunities waiting to be discovered by those who come to explore within its boundaries. GSMNP, which has something for everyone to experience and enjoy in the park, attracts more than twice as many visitors as any other US national park. However, many visitors are new to the park and do not know where to begin exploring the vast number of options they are presented within the GSMNP. Even for visitors who know what they would like to do during their visits, they often do not know where the best places to fulfill their desires are. Repeat visitors to the park may also want to explore new areas of the park that they have not yet encountered, but know little about the park beyond the most popular destinations. Most park visitors stay along the main roads, trails, and popular attractions of the park and do not venture to the equally attractive but lesser known areas. The 308 sq km GSMNP has something to offer everyone who comes to the park and having a memorable trip to the park is a matter of matching the wishes of the visitors to the resources within the park. The spatial aspect in a problem of this nature lends itself well to applications of geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial decision support systems (SDSS). This paper presents a GIS-based SDSS application that assists the park visitors in discovering various hidden treasures in GSMNP and matches their personal interests to the abundant resources available in the park. Such a GIS-based SDSS will not only offer park visitors with a useful tool to facilitate their activity planning but also increase their satisfaction from the matched personal interests and park resources. The remaining sections of this paper are organized as follows. Section 2 presents the background information of GSMNP, GIS, and SDSS. Section 3 describes a GIS-based spatial decision system designed to assist the visitors of GSMNP in discovering and planning potential activities in the park. An example is included to illustrate how the GIS-based SDSS application can be used to recommend the trails that best match the interests of a park visitor. The paper is concluded with suggestions of future development of the current system and the potential of using GIS and SDSS in other applications related to retailing and consumer services.

This study demonstrates the power of integrating GIS with SDSS for a tourism application. GIS-based SDSS provide useful tools to help tackle many semi-structured spatial decision problems that we often encounter in the real world. For the visitors of GSMNP, there are many resources and activities awaiting them to explore and experience. However, most visitors have no or very limited knowledge about these possibilities. It, therefore, presents a challenging task for the visitors to plan their activities in the park to deliver the experiences they are looking for. Since different visitors often look for different activities and experiences based on their personal preferences and constraints, it is not feasible to find one optimal plan for everyone. The GIS-based SDSS application of TrailFinder presented in this paper shows how we can develop an easy-to-use and flexible system to assist GSMNP visitors in choosing the trails that better match their personal interests and give them a more satisfying experience during their visits. To help assess the effectiveness of this application, a survey could be conducted in the future to evaluate if the system improves the tourist's experience in the park. This GIS-based SDSS application for GSMNP represents a starting point for future systems to be developed. Initially, this application was designed to be available at visitor centers. The next step would be to migrate the system to a web-based GIS application where it could be accessed from anywhere in the world. This would allow visitors to plan trips from their home before they come to the park and would allow them to optimize their time spent in the park. A web-based application also opens new possibilities such as linking the system to online routing tools and park resources already available on the Internet. It could route a user from anywhere in the United States to the park. Online weather information also could be linked to enhance the system. For example, a 5-day weather forecast could be used to rank the trails based on their flooding potential or accessibility levels during sever weather. As more data become available on the flora and fauna of the park, additional wildlife options could be added to the system. This information could be useful for visiting scientist coming to study particular species. They could easily identify which trails would give them a greater chance of finding their target species based on the habitat probability maps utilized by the system. This system also could be expanded to include other parks within the National Park System. The expanded system then will be able to suggest particular national parks for visitors to enjoy based on their preferences and constraints. This system also can be further developed to benefit retail businesses surrounding the national parks. With online links to hotels, restaurants, shopping places, and other recreational opportunities in the surrounding area, this system can help retail businesses to reach their potential customers. For example, a family plans to stay in the Gatlingburg area outside GSMNP for three nights and would like to find a hotel that charges $70 per night or less and is as close to a seafood restaurant as possible. This GIS-based SDSS can help find the hotels and the restaurants that meet the family's criteria. In addition, local outfitters could be linked to the system to offer guide services within a particular region as well as clothing, equipment, and other retail options that would meet the different needs of individual visitors. Matching customers’ preferences with the available services is an important business consideration. This paper illustrates that a GIS-based SDSS can offer significant benefits to tourism as well as other retail businesses to improve the experience and satisfaction of their customers. The power of GIS-based SDSS becomes especially apparent when the decisions involve choices of opportunities (e.g., hiking trails, hotels, restaurants, retail stores) at different locations in space.