Sustainable, Environmental & Safe tourism in protected areas: focus on SENSA successful on-site results

The Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) is pleased to present the successful on-site results of the research project « Sustainable, Enrivonmental & Safe tourism in protected areas » (SENSA2).

SENSA2 is the following of SENSA project that finished successfully in December 2015. The project supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) is leaded by Cybercultus (Luxembourg) in partnership with LIST (LU), SIEL Voyages (LU) and Geoville Information Systems (AT).

SENSA2 was born with the ambitious objective to increase revenues for protected areas through tourism while ensuring conservation of these unique and still preserved areas. It promotes an increase of opportunities for travellers while enhancing environmental preservation, and consequently increasing revenues for both Natural Parks Authorities and Ecotourism Travel Operators. The project team addressed this challenge by implementing a collaborative platform supporting sustainable & responsible tourism in protected remote areas, such as natural parks, natural reserves and historical sites. It targets the needs of end-users (responsible travellers / tourists) seeking authentic and natural travels in well preserved wilderness areas.

The intension of SENSA2 is to update and improve what was done during the first part of the project by having more robust services with an improved look & feel, but also the addition of some functionalities such as a monitoring and trends tool, the updating of park management and rangers services (with the addition of a mobile application dedicated to rangers), and making a link with social networks for tourist trips.

LIST’s researchers working on the project are working on the development and testing sides. LIST developed among other functionalities the SEM – Smart Exchange Module – enabling communication between the project component, and the Monitoring and Trends. LIST also is responsible of the tests performed during the project. 

The latest good news about SENSA2 project is that it passed with success the on-Site Acceptance Test (SAT), the testing that takes place after the complete installation and final configuration just before the training and the pilots that will take place in South Africa. SAT is one of the milestones meeting asked by ESA in its projects, among Critical Design Review (CDR), Factory Acceptance Test (FAT), the on-Site Acceptance Test (SAT) and the Final Review (FR). 

With SENSA2, all the test scenarios that have been carried out were successful. Next steps are the training that will take place in South Africa in April, and then the pilots that will take place from May 2018.

> For any further information on this topic, contact Marie-Laure Watrinet via email.