Mobile Applications as Tool for Exploiting Cultural Heritage in the Region of Turin and Milan

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The current research aims at showing as applications working on personal mobile communication terminals such as smartphones, can be useful for exploration of places and, at the same time, as tools able to develop interaction between cultural heritage and users. In this sense, the use of smartphone applications can be combined with GIS in order to make a platform of knowledge useful to support research studies in the field of cultural heritage, with specific reference to accessibility issues and to the combined use of integrated technologies like GPS, QR code and GIS, with the final aim to find an useful methodology for collecting data by visitors and visualizing them through mapping techniques. The research shows how the integration of different systems and technologies can be used as method for inquiring the interactions between users and cultural heritage in terms of accessibility to places. GPS devices can be used to record visitors movements (cultural routes) in terms of space and time; QR code can be used for users interaction with cultural heritage (tourists opinion, heritage ranking, facilities, accessibility); GIS software can be used for data management, analysis and mapping (tourist flows, more visited places). The focus of research is about a combination of information related to cultural routes with the information related to single cultural places. The focus of research is about a combination of information related to cultural routes with the information related to single cultural places. The current research shows the potential use of smartphone applications, as mobile device for collecting data, as means to record rides and more visited places by tourists. The research could be divided into three steps; the first one concerns with GPS that can be used to record routes; the second one deals with interaction between tourists and cultural heritage through a system based on QR code; the third one is about GIS, used as tool for management, analysis and visualization of data flows. In the current research, the field of investigation refers both to the territorial scale of Turin -Milan axis, and to the local scale of small cities localized in the territories in between. The research has been applied to Turin -Milan infrastructural axis, with the aim to represent the relationships that can be established between mobility infrastructure and cultural heritage. Such relationships should be intended in terms of accessibility from mobility infrastructure (motorway exit, service areas, railways stations) to cultural heritage localized in the surrounding landscape. The richness of cultural heritage and landscape along the chosen infrastructural bundle represent a great opportunity for territorial development in terms of attractiveness, both for local inhabitants and for tourists. Nowadays, the use of tracking technologies can be applied to investigate tourist flows, behaviors of local inhabitants in the historic city centre, number of visitors in the city and so on. In this sense it is possible to apply...

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