Evaluating the structure and use of hiking trails in recreational areas using a mixed GPS tracking and graph theory approach

Abstract Recreational trails encourage numerous outdoor leisure activities in a variety of urban, rural, and natural environments. Understanding the way trails function is crucial for the designers and managers of recreational sites to balance the needs of visitors and site capacities. This paper presents a new approach to evaluate the structure and use of hiking trails by combining GPS tracking and analytical methods based on graph theory. The study is based upon empirical data (N = 482 GPS tracks) collected in the Lobau, which is part of the Danube Floodplains National Park in Austria. The physical structure of trails (structural network; undirected graph) and their usage (functional netw…