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Social media services and location-based photo-sharing applications, such as Flickr, Twitter, and Instagram, provide a promising opportunity for studying tourist behaviors and activities. Researchers can use public accessible geo-tagged photos to map and analyze hotspots and tourist activities in various tourist attractions. This research studies geo-tagged Flickr photos collected from the Grand Canyon area within 12 months (2014/12/01–2015/11/30) using kernel density estimate (KDE) mapping, Exif (Exchangeable image file format) data, and dynamic time warping (DTW) methods. Different spatiotemporal movement patterns of tourists and popular points of interests (POIs) in the Grand Canyon area are identified and visualized in GIS maps. The frequency of Flickr’s monthly photos is similar (but not identical) to the actual tourist total numbers in the Grand Canyon. We found that winter tourists in the Grand Canyon explore fewer POIs comparing to summer tourists based on their Flickr data. Tourists using high-end cameras are more active and explore more POIs than tourists using smart phones photos. Weekend tourists are more likely to stay around the lodge area comparing to weekday tourists who have visited more remote areas in the park, such as the north of Pima Point. These tourist activities and spatiotemporal patterns can be used for the improvement of national park facility management, regional tourism, and local transportation plans.
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Photography and Exploration of Tourist Locations Based on Optimal Foraging Theory
Animals search for food in their environment with a decision strategy which keeps them fit. Optimal Foraging Theory models this foraging behavior to determine the optimal decision strategy followed by animals. This theory has been successfully applied for humans as they search for information and is termed as Information Foraging. When people visit a tourist location, they follow a similar strategy to move from one spot to another and collect information by capturing photographs. This behavior has similarities with the foraging behavior of animals which has been widely studied by researchers. In this work, we propose to employ Optimal Foraging Theory to help tourists explore a location and capture photographs in an optimal way. We determine a decision strategy for tourist which provides a list of interesting spots to visit in a tourist location along with corresponding stay time. Finally, we solve an optimization problem to find a path through these spots which can be followed by tourists. Experimental results on a public dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1741431
- PAR ID:
- 10111241
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology
- ISSN:
- 1051-8215
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 1
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSVT.2019.2915103
