This application is available for viewing at the Torrevieja Tourist Office and at the Visitor Reception Center of the Natural Park.
Tourism in Torrevieja
Protected Natural Areas are ecosystems with great ecological and socio-economic value, but they are also especially vulnerable to climatic and anthropogenic pressures. The vulnerability and complexity of these ecosystems requires a systemic understanding of the socio-ecological interrelationships that affect these areas that allows the development of sustainable tourism models.
To this end, the CHAN-TWIN project (“Changing tourism: digital twin strategy for the sustainable development of smart protected natural spaces based on ecological indicators”) is being developed, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and by the European Union (Next Generation). This project, led by the University of Alicante (UA) and the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), has the collaboration of the Torrevieja City Council, the Natural Park of the Lagoons of Torrevieja and La Mata, Mastral Project, Faunatura, AGAMED, INVAT·TUR and CIEDA.
Digital Twin of the Natural Park
The objective of the project is to create a digital twin of the natural park that allows the monitoring, analysis and sustainable management of this privileged environment of the Valencian Community. During today, the Councilor for Tourism of the Torrevieja City Council, Rosario Martínez Chazarra, together with the Researchers responsible for the project José Norberto Mazón (UA) and José María Cecilia (UPV) and the director of the Natural Park, Francisco Martínez, have presented the first results of this project that is in its first year of execution.
Specifically, an application that allows to visualize the indicators of sustainable tourism collected thanks to the sensory deployed in the natural park as part of the digital twin.
Rosario Martínez stressed that this research project is aligned with the Torrevieja Tourism Strategy in its commitment to positioning the city as a benchmark in the Smart Tourist Destinations (DTI) model, as well as in the development of innovative lines of work that have tourism sustainability processes as a reference. In the same way, Francisco Martínez has highlighted the relevance of this project for the efficient management of the natural park, thanking its component applied to solve real problems of this protected natural space. In this sense, José Norberto Mazón has stressed the importance of initiatives such as the Torrevieja University Intelligent Tourism Laboratory (TILAB) that allow R&D&I projects to materialize in tourist destinations, favoring more competitive and sustainable tourism-territorial models. Finally, José María Cecilia has shown a tour of the application, explaining the main technical components of the project, which include the deployment of sensors that generate data in real time to calculate the proposed tourism indicators.