This R&D project is going to develop knowledge for a multi-use management system for the outdoors in four municipalities in Western Norway. The management system is going to be tested according to value creation, consequences for the right to free access, land owners interest and critical elements for implementation. The over arching aim is to stimulate activity in the outdoors, contribute to settlement and attractivity for students and visitors, in sum value creation.

Gathering data with electronic counters

One way to gather data about the use of trails is with digital counters. In order to measure popularity, variation in use throughout the year and the effect of measures taken to affect the use of trails we have installed two types of digital counters at different locations. These are delivered and produced by the Canadian company TRAFx. One type measures movement using an infrared sensor, and the other by measuring change in its own magnetic field thus sensing the metal i bicycles. The counters registers at which time something in front or over it down to the second so that we can see patterns in traffic throught the day. No other information than the passing (as measured by the sensor in the counter) is written. The counters are not connected to the internet, and the data is usually collected once to twice a year. The data is then aggregated to make statistics from, for example visualised by graph: