TurisDron: drones to assess the sustainability of tourism in Cadiz
8 March, 2023To evaluate how much environmental pressure tourism exerts on the coasts of Cadiz and what resilience capacity they have to withstand it. That is the objective of TurisDron 'Drone technology at the service of sustainable tourism' (ProyExcel_00052), a research project which seeks to promote tourism as a more sustainable activity for Andalusian coastal ecosystems, in order to guarantee the preservation of one’s health.
The project was presented at the Institute of Marine Sciences of Andalusia (ICMAN-CSIC), with February 17 coinciding with the UN’s declaration as World Tourism Resilience Day. Numerous scientific studies have already confirmed the harmful effect that certain pollutants associated with tourist activity have on marine ecosystems such as sun creams or plastic rubbish.
However we still do not know to what extent ecological stress can support the coasts faced with excessive tourist pressure. Here TurisDron claims to make indexes which determine this threshold based on the real time analysis of environmental, chemical and physical parameters indicative of pollution. This information will allow authorities to take decisions leading to the area's sustainable usage.