Network Platform for Tourism Sector: Transformation and Interpretation of Multifaceted Data

Abstract

Modern network science has become a prominent concept, attracting diverse scientific societies to solve a wide spectrum of theoretical and practical problems. Tourism is a sphere wherein the outlines of the network’s scope are distinct. In the study, the network approach was applied in its dual form for both network-like regional tourism data (NLRTD) and network-unlike regional tourism data (NURTD), to explore the tourism destination of Baikal natural territory, Russia, in regard to the challenges of the general sustainability of regional socio-ecological systems. The aim of the study is to elaborate a comprehensive network platform to harmonize such complex and fragile systems as Baikal natural territory. Saturated with networking ideology, the approach spans a huge set of interacting social, technological and ecological elements of the comprehensive system in order to support its functionality and sustainability in general. Particularly, the paper utilizes data from interviews done in Olkhon island (2017–2018), and publicly available textual, spatial and temporal data. NLRTD with pertinent networkization procedures was utilized in transportation schemes, while the NURTD concept implies the networkalization of landscape and land use maps. The platform provides researchers and stakeholders with concentrated information which might be not only effectively processed, but also intelligible, and correctly compared and implemented in contiguous spheres.