Together with climate change, loss of biodiversity is one of the most important challenges of our time.
Nature reserves, especially national parks, are important instruments for the conservation of nature, its vital habitats and its biodiversity. With the digital transformation of our world, these areas are facing new challenges. Through online and digital resources, recreational opportunities in wild and remote places have become more accessible than ever, yet many users are unaware of how sensitive these areas can be and which protection measures have been set up to ensure their sustainable use.
Online data has become one of the most important resources for information media and thus has a great influence on user behavior. Many of those interested in experiencing the outdoors inform themselves via Google, OpenStreetMap, recommendation portals and route portals. The information presented on these sites forms an important basis for the planning of many outdoor activities. As of now, information on regulations in protected areas (e.g. leash laws, temporary trail closures, closures due to endangered species etc.) is largely unavailable online and thus often ignored. This problem has then been exacerbated by the accelerating growth of user-generated content and tour suggestions, which are not subject to natural park regulation, but simply represent what is most liked by others regardless of real-world consequences. If park visitors are not aware of the rules then they cannot choose to follow them, even if they want to. Accelerated by the effects of the Corona pandemic (which has led to an increase in outdoor activities in rural and especially conservation areas) protected areas are reporting a significant increase in rule violations by recreational users.

Increasing pressure on natural spaces combined with the importance of outdoor experiences and the ever accelerating digitization of our society are issues that affect us all regardless of borders. As a next step, we want to extend our system into a comprehensive European framework. With additional funds, we can begin digitizing the regulations of important European national parks, building a strong network of European experts and adding multipliers to collect and provide important information on the protection of our wilderness.
The more than 300 national parks in Europe are hotspots of biodiversity and undisturbed wilderness in addition to being important recreational centers. To ensure that these functions do not interfere with each other, it is important to enable access to natural areas while minimizing the associated negative impacts. By ensuring the availability of important conservation information online, everyone can do their part in the protection of our wilderness.
Digital data platform
Digitize the Planet e.V. is creating a data platform that allows authorized protected area managers to enter and maintain their rules in a structured way. This data infrastructure manages the rules and all necessary spatial and non-spatial additional information and makes them openly available via a website application and its API.