Modeling the Variety of Trip Opportunities in Recreational Route Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we deal with the question of how the variety of trip opportunities can be modeled in - possibly complex - recreational trail networks (such as hiking paths or cycling ways). In order to quantify the variety of possible loop trips starting from specific trailheads (starting nodes accessible from outside the network) and the variety of connecting trips between specific origin-destination pairs, two novel measures of Loop Trip Variety Index (LTVI) and Connecting Trip Variety Index (CTVI) are proposed preliminarily and informally in [12], respectively, in the frame of assessing the impacts of some recent trail network developments. This paper establishes the formal definitions of improved variants of these measures, shows their well-definedness, presents the algorithms of their computation, investigates on their properties and benefits, and gives reasons of how and to what extent they can be treated as models of trip variety. Possible uses, application areas and future improvements are sketched especially for visitor management planning and profile-based trip recommendation systems.