NATURAL HERITAGE MANAGEMENT AND PROMOTION THROUGH FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE: A PRELIMINARY SYSTEM DESIGN FOR THE INSUBRIPARKS PROJECT

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Nowadays, sustainable development and preservation of territories poses a number of challenges requiring innovative and robust technological tools to fully accomplish them. According to this, the design of an integrated tourism management system is here discussed. The tourism management system is developed for the Insubria Region within the INSUBRIPARKS project, funded by the Interreg program of the European Union. The Insubria is a historical-geographical area stretches between Northern Italy and Southern Switzerland embedding a valuable historical and natural heritage. Nevertheless, the tourism potential of the region is not fully exploited due to a fragmented political context within the geographical area that extends across different local and national jurisdictions. The final goal of the project to increase tourism attractiveness of the Insubria Region through the provision of physical infrastructure, the development and promotion of new tourism experiences, and the deployment of a standardized Information Technology infrastructure to support cross-border land management and marketing operations. Central to this paper is the preliminary design of this infrastructure that will provide tools for supporting information generating and consuming among project partners and external stakeholders. The design phase leverages exclusively Free and Open Source Software. Alongside the preliminary architecture, both use cases and user requirements are discussed together with the expected benefits deriving from the co-creation of best tourism management practices by means of open and shared software platforms.</p>