Abstract for presentation at Spatial Sciences Institute International Biennial Conference

Modelling self-drive tourist flows across desert Australia using VRUMTM

  • Vanessa Chewings, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia
  • Paul Box, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia
  • Joseph Breen, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia
  • Margaret Friedel, Australia
  • Dean Carson, Charles Darwin University, Australia
  • Andrew Taylor, Charles Darwin University, Australia

    • Tourism is a major industry in desert Australia and significantly enhances livelihoods for many who live there. Concerns within the industry and in desert communities regarding infrastructure, safety, access and travel routes can be addressed via a collaborative approach across jurisdictions. The Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre On TrackTM project is looking at these issues focussing on four wheel drive (4WD) based tourism, investigating how visitors move through the desert and why they choose particular routes. A GIS based system called VRUMTM (Visualising Relatively Unpredictable Movements) has been established to visualise, map and model travel patterns derived from visitor surveys.
    Information from annual National and International Visitor Surveys (NVS, IVS) produced by Tourism Research Australia was used to map visitor flows through desert Australia using VRUMTM. Each record contains information on consecutive overnight stops at the Statistical Local Area level. Routes for individual survey records were generated and superimposed on a road network to map visitor flow patterns.
    The spatial analyses yielded information on visitor behaviour in desert Australia including main entry and exit points, dispersal from service centres, destinations commonly included on trips and flow lines.
    Results will enable better planning by tourism marketing agencies, remote settlements and tourism businesses, land managers and infrastructure providers.

    Conference Organiser - ICMS Pty Ltd