The goal of this work has been to achieve a Geographic Information System, using innovative
cartographic representation of the land and landscape, which can provide to the end users an easier
and immediate access regarding tourist, cultural and environmental information.
This is an ongoing research, carried out in collaboration with the Department of Civil, Engineering,
Environmental, Aerospace, Materials (DICAM) of University of Palermo, with the objective to
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Atti 17a Conferenza Nazionale ASITA - Riva del Garda 5-7 novembre 2013
achieve a complete integration between software used only by qualified specialists in the field and
online platforms display.
To experience this work, has been used tourist information about the four regional Sicilian Parks:
Madonie, Nebrodi, Etna and Alcantara.
The software tools used in this project are the ESRI ArcGIS 9 and Google Earth for the display
platform of the virtual globe.
For such purpose, the study has been divided into three steps:
\uf0b7 First step: gathering maps necessary in order to achieve the objectives and the realization of
the thematic maps, either for the environmentally protective restrictions and the territorial
administrative boundary.
\uf0b7 Second step: research and selection of tourist information for each park; creation and
processing of its thematic maps.
\uf0b7 Third step: export of thematic maps in Google Earth using KML interchange format,
integrated with the addition of metadata containing the characteristics of places.
The results obtained to date from this research show that the integration of GIS and online display
platforms of satellite images, enriched in geographic content, can be valuable support to the new
vision of \u201cdigital tourism\u201d, allowing the use of tourist information to heterogeneous users not
necessarily specialized.
This study, in the near future, can be extended embracing new environmental contexts and more
tourist information
