Abstract
Tourism in mountain regions has increased during the last decades. The Dolomites, a mountain range located in northeastern Italy, is one of the World’s tourist hotspots. Tourists are attracted to the Dolomites mainly for outdoor activities including hiking, skiing, climbing, cycling and many others. In addition, the Dolomites offer a large variety of cultural and educational activities, such as a visit to the GEOPARC Bletterbach. The park is one of the nine Dolomites UNESCO World heritage sites receiving more than 60.000 tourist visits every year. It can be visited including a guided cultural and geological hike. However, a visit to the GEOPARC is not without risk, as tourists expose themselves to a complex mountain-gorge terrain. Here, sudden occurrence of floods, rock and tree falls which may be caused, for example, bad weather conditions and which lead to poor visibility and disorientation can ultimately result in dangerous incidents. In turn, a mountain rescue operation to help tourists may become necessary. The main difficulty to notify the emergency services from inside the gorge is the lack of cellphone coverage. To do so, a person needs to reach one of the so-called emergency spots from which coverage is secured and can thus provide information to the authorities about the incident. In the proposed proof-of-concept work, an interdisciplinary research team in coordination with the park authorities of the GEOPARC aims to explore the use of a new technology to accelerate the process of such a search and rescue operation inside the park. to the proposed research plans to equip visitors with wearable sensors to track the geo-position of the park visitors. Information will be transmitted to a centralized system to precisely locate the visitors. In case of an emergency, the device can transmit an alarm and set off an emergency call. For location precision, , the park authority can also deploy a drone equipped with a receiver to be able to exactly localize the victim. Ultimately, mountain emergency medicine doctors will be trained with standard and the proposed new technology in simulated accident scenarios.