Highlights of 2007/08

• Work on VRUM™ (visualising relatively unpredictable movement) continued apace. The baseline maps (showing flows between destinations from visitor surveys conducted between 1998 and 2006) are complete. These flows were attached to transport networks, and flow changes based on a range of ‘events’ (changes in road conditions, new tourism attractions, marketing campaigns, weather events and so on) were processed. Main Roads WA provided traffic-count data, while Tourism NT and the South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC) sourced similar data for their jurisdictions. Members of 4WD Victoria assisted researchers at James Cook University by providing trip diaries to build datasets in the predictive modelling. HEMA Maps continued to provide its map data, which is used to assess the relative attractiveness of routes and destinations.
• The task of developing VRUM™’s gravity models, which estimate the attractiveness of various travel paths to and across desert Australia, was undertaken by researchers at Charles Darwin University (CDU).
• The Advanced Traveller Information System was re-badged iOutback™. A demonstration project was scoped with the Outback Areas Community Development Trust, SATC and researchers at CDU and Curtin University of Technology. iOutback™will work toward a demonstration of its capacity, with a limited number of functions, at a field site in early 2009.
• PhD candidates examined a number of OnTrack™-related projects. In one, visitor perceptions of the nature of the four-wheel-drive experience on the Great Central Highway were studied to assess the role that Aboriginal culture plays in the visitor experience, and how this might be exploited for economic gain. In a second project a student completed an exploratory field visit along the Gunbarrel Highway to generate a better understanding of what makes an ‘ideal’ our-wheel-drive track.