| Abstract [eng] |
Whilst cycling tourism and other various cyclist movements are getting more popular, there comes a need to plan the universal cycling infrastructure responsibly and effectively so that it gives the best user benefit. In Lithuania‘s Protected Territories or Regional Parks when planning and designing new tourist cycling routes the attention is always paid and highlighted on the cultural and tourist attractions, but the attention is lacking about the physical cyclist needs and the cyclists are not informed about the aspacets describing tourist cycling route difficulty. That is why there is a need to have a complex methodology of tourist bicycle route difficulty assessment and tools which would allow assessment of current and future cycling infrastructure not only outside the urban areas, but to also use it in the cities. This type of complex tourist bicycle route systems with the approach of difficulty assessment were not developed before. Worldwide the used practice is of simple informing, when tourists get brochures in place about cycling routes with their length, relief profile and the planned duration of the trip. Furthermore, there are mountain bike trail sports grading systems, which pay attention to different kind of criterions that are only important to sportsmen, therefore, these type of routes cannot be equated to the usual tourist bicycle routes solely because of the technicity of the routes and unsuitability for tourism. Therefore, the goal of this work is to develop a complex methodological system of tourist bicycle route difficulty assessment and create GIS tools that apply this system. Various research methods were used in order to achieve the goals: analysis of literature sources, the application of multicriteria decision making systems, cyclist survey, GIS modelling methodology and practical testing of GIS model. The work includes introduction, three main text body parts, conclusions, list of literature and information sources, summaries in Lithuanian and English and nine Appendices. Cyclist survey of 119 cyclists showed that there is a need to develop a complex methodological system of tourist bicycle route difficulty assessment, because the current practical applications supply for cyclists does not sufficiently solve the planning of tourist bicycle routes nor offers difficulty assessment functions. Based on the chosen research methods and cyclist survey results, a complex methodology of tourist bicycle route difficulty assessment was developed, and this methodology includes three different evaluation criterions and able to check the difficulty assessment for different cyclist types. The developed complex methodology of tourist bicycle routes was applied with GIS technologies and an automated GIS model was created. This automated GIS model proved the practical application of the developed methodology, as well as wide opportunities to reuse the model by integrating it in various cyclist applications and internet applications. A practical testing of GIS automated model was performed and it showed that the match between the GIS model assessment and cyclist assessment during practical bicycle route testing was about 80%, which means that this model is suitable for a complex tourist bicycle route difficulty assessment. In the paper, based on the practical testing of GIS automated model, there are recommendations how this newly developed GIS automated model, derived from a complex methodology of tourist bicycle route difficulty assessment, could be expanded and improved. |
