A network of sensors was deployed at several spots across the Iscte’s Campus, and crowding information was collected for one-year long, from September 2022 until September 2023. The sensors were deployed in typical usage scenarios within the university, in both indoor and outdoor environments, to test the STToolkit in different areas with different crowding behaviors, such as areas with an extended permanency time (study room and university library) or areas with a heavy traffic flow of people (indoor and outdoor passages).

A dedicated dashboard was purposefully developed to render the crowding information collected by the sensors, with spatiotemporal renderings of information, such as graphs to compare crowding between locations and to perceive and analyze past-gathered data, tables to keep track of the sensor's status and operation, and graphs to perceive the crowding geo-distribution at the campus. This dashboard allowed users to easily, quickly, and non-effortlessly monitor several locations in real-time.

This field experiment showed the ability of sensors to perceive people’s concentration and flows according to the general usage of spaces, as well as highly-populated events and its duration, which were extremely important to perceive due to the nature of overcrowding situations.

The Pena Palace is a well-known Romanticist castle in São Pedro de Penaferrim, in the municipality of Sintra, Portugal. It is one of the most popular tourist sites in the country. Pena Palace is surrounded by Pena Park, a large walkable park with several gardens and landscaped areas with indigenous and exotic species from all over the world. The park also includes waterfalls, tanks, lakes, and fountains, along with small decorative buildings that visitors can explore.

As the majority of people come to Pena Park just to visit the Pena Palace, the latter is faced with permanent overcrowding, leading to long queues and unpleasant waiting times that deteriorate visitors' quality of experience and satisfaction. On the other hand, Pena Park is much less visited and ends up being a relatively unused space, with such a wide and large area to explore that most visitors usually do not take advantage of. 

Faced with this problem, tourism managers have been trying to increase Pena Park’s attractiveness and encourage tourists to visit areas other than just the Pena Palace to mitigate the over-tourism problem and enhance visitors' quality of experience as they are introduced to the numerous attractions that Pena Park has to offer. One of those incentive actions involved holding horse riding events to encourage people to visit Pena Park instead of going directly to the Pena Palace.

Two sensors were deployed to monitor the event area to help measure the impact of these events: one inside a Kiosk and another inside a helppoint. The sensors performed 24/7 real-time detection and periodically uploaded the number of devices detected in its proximity to the cloud server. A customized dashboard was purposefully created to visualize the crowding data collected by the sensors, with graphs for temporal renderings of information and also maps to show the location of each sensor and its crowding levels in real time, allowing tourism managers to quickly and easily perceive the crowding phenomena at Pena Park.

The sensors could reproduce the crowding tendencies in the event venue, thus allowing tourism managers to measure the impact of the public events held at Pena Park and make more informed decisions about crowding at the park. As such, this field experiment showed that the STToolkit can positively impact overcrowding management.

The mitigation action: regular horseriding events beside the castle to reduce queue's pressure

Assessing the "attraction effect" of the horseriding events using our crowd-monitoring solution

The Palace of Monserrate is located in the parish of São Pedro de Penaferrim, in the municipality of Sintra, Portugal. Francis Cook, a wealthy 19th-century English industrialist and great art collector, materialized this popular tourist destination. Cook transformed Monserrate into a very attractive tourist site, with lush gardens of exotic species worldwide and a palace like a true work of romantic architecture.

The Monserrate Park is also the stage for the "Jazz in Monserrate" music festival. Privileged for its contact between culture and nature, this festival combines a place of contemplation and wonder par excellence with a solid, high-quality program. It is also a meeting point for generations, conviviality, equality, and fusion.

Given the attractiveness of this festival, crowding sensors will be installed in Monserrate Park to monitor the festival area and measure its impact, which information will be provided to the tourism managers. To this end, the Iscte team has already traveled to Monserrate Park to assess the physical conditions of the sensor installation sites and carry out coverage tests to ascertain their detection range in relation to the area where the festival will take place.

The National Palace of Queluz is a 17th-century palace located in Queluz, in the municipality of Sintra, Portugal. It is one of the last great rococo-style buildings designed in Europe, and was conceived as a summer retreat and later official residence for several members of the Portuguese royal family, and has been classified as a national monument of Portugal since 1910. 

In addition to the palace's interior, which boasts excellent attention to detail, this tourist site is also known for its extensive gardens and features, being a major attraction for tourists as well.

Giving this context, the crowding sensors will be installed to monitor the occupancy of people in the palace gardens, helping tourism managers to better understand crowding in this location. To this end, reconnaissance of the sites for physical installation and coverage tests of the sensors have already been carried out, and their installation will take place shortly, during the summer of 2024.

Located in the heart of Portugal's most important wetland, the Tagus Estuary Natural Reserve, EVOA—Tagus Estuary Birdwatching and Conservation Area, allows visitors to learn about and enjoy the unique heritage of Lezíria and the Tagus Estuary.

EVOA integrates three freshwater wetlands, covering a total of 70 hectares, with lagoons that are of extreme importance for birdlife as they are used as refuge and nesting areas. It also allows visitors to experience this unique and distinctive fauna, being the attraction for many birdlife enthusiasts and bird watchers. It is also the destination for many study visits by young classes of students.

To ensure the tranquillity of the birds and maximize the visitor's experience and comfort, the EVOA has built several observatories, photographic hides, and inconspicuous viewpoints throughout its vast area. Nevertheless, excessive noise generated by visitors (possibly generated by the excess of people in the small observatories and photographic hides) could disturb the birds and cause them to fly out of the lagoons, negatively influencing both its tranquillity and the visitors' experience.

Therefore, the crowding sensors will also be deployed across the several observatories and photographic hides to help preserve bird life while promoting birdwatching. The sensors will monitor the occupancy of the small booths, allowing the EVOA’s managers to better manage the visitations according to their occupancy, avoiding potential disturbances by an excessive number of people. Furthermore, high-sensitive parabolic and acoustic sensors will be copulated in the sensors and used to determine the bird species by listening to their distinctive sounds.

A total of 6 sensors will be deployed across the EVOA, from which a first technical reconnaissance was already conducted, and the final installations will be prosecuted soon, during the summer of 2024.