A methodology of estimating visitor numbers at an Icelandic destination using a vehicle counter and a radar

Abstract

Knowing the number of visitors to a destination is a basic requirement for the management of visitor services, experiences and impacts. This paper is a part of a long-term study that uses vehicle counters to compute visitor numbers at several Icelandic nature-based tourist destinations. All counters need to be calibrated for errors in the counting. Furthermore, when data on vehicle numbers are used to compute visitor numbers it is important to collect additional data. The counters cannot distinguish between direction, nor the size of the vehicle. Therefore, it is important to collect additional data on the ratio between private cars and buses, as buses carry far more people than private cars. Both the calibration of the counters and the length estimates have traditionally been done manually, which is time consuming and expensive. This paper describes an automatic method, using a microwave radar, to calibrate the counters and measure the length of the vehicles at the same time, making it easy to find the ratio between private cars and buses. As far as the authors know, a microwave radar has not been used for this purpose before. The reliability of the radar to calibrate the vehicle counters and measure the length of the vehicles was computed. The findings indicate that using radar to calibrate the counters is more reliable and economical than the traditional manual calibration. For the management of destinations, it is important to have reliable information on vehicle numbers, the ratio between vehicle types (private cars and buses), as well as visitor numbers. The study provides an important and novel method for calibrating vehicle counters automatically for errors. It is important to provide reliable vehicle numbers in cost-effective way. Automatic data collection makes it possible to collect data 24 h a day and during different seasons. This is the first attempt to use a radar to calibrate vehicle counters and analyse the reliability of the radar's length measurement.