2023 Ashtekar Frontiers of Science

Exploring Open Science and Big Data

Presented by Bing Pan

Professor of Commercial Recreation and Tourism, Penn State

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Visitors to a destination or a national park interact with information technologies throughout their journeys and leave various online digital traces. Researchers can tap into these traces for forecasting and monitoring visitors in tourism and national park settings. Search engine queries, website logs, mobile phone data, reservation data, social media, GPS traces, and simulations can help us monitor, predict, and manage visitors to a place or a national park, understand their demographics and visitation experience, or find the best evaluation strategy in a national park in an emergency scenario.

Bing Pan is a professor of commercial recreation and tourism in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management at Penn State. His research interests include big data analytics in national parks and tourism, destination marketing, smart tourism, and travel benefits.