Page 50 - A bird’s-eye view of recreation - Rogier Pouwels

A bird's-eye view of recreation
3.4 Simulation models
3.4.1 MASOOR
MASOOR (Multi Agent Simulation of Outdoor Recreation) (see Jochem et al. 2007 for a complete description of the model) is a multi-agent recreational behavior simulation model. The model captures the transactional experience of different visitor types in natural areas containing a high density trail network.
The visitors are modeled as individual agents. Each visitor type is defined by specific behavior and goals. The visitors’ behavior is contained in a hierarchical control system that provides a framework for identifying visit goals and constraints, defining path networks that enable goal attainment and specifying specific behavioral rules for navigating through the network in pursuit of goals. The benefit of a hierarchical control system in MASOOR is that it defines the symbolic landscape used by recreational visitors at multiple scales. Spatial characterization of these inputs is retained in a GIS framework, where, for example, the spatial configuration and actual attributes of the defined trails are stored as a fixed path network. The spatial and temporal outputs generated by MASOOR can be processed in GIS to provide the required output for the recreation impact.
3.4.2 Parameters of MASOOR case study
The area has five main entrance points (Fig. 3). In the case study, the entrance points are treated as exit points as well. This means that all visitors will make a circular trip. The distribution of visitors over the entrance points is based on counting from 1998 (Table 1) (Jaarsma and Webster 1999). Two types of visitors were defined and the mean duration of a trip is 2.5 hours (Bakker and Lengkeek 1999). The first type of visitors follows a marked route with an average length of 5 km and the second type of visitors follows randomly selected paths having an average length of 7.5 km. The standard deviation in trail length for both types of visitors is 1 km. For each scenario one model run with 50000 agents was done. There was no interaction between the agents.
Table 1. Distribution of visitors over the different entrance points (Fig. 2) (From: Jaarsma and Webster 1998).
Entrance point Zandvoortselaan Oase
Panneland
Zilk Langevelderslag
% of total visitors 15.5
41.6 21.5 20.6
0.7
48