Carrying out a route through a natural area following the location indications of a mobile application, through a GPS navigator, sometimes causes dangerous situations. For those who enter the natural enclave, often without having much knowledge of the place, and also for the protected area of fauna and flora, with places that suffer from overcrowding or the unwanted presence of people at certain times.
With the aim of preventing these double risk situations, a line of collaboration has been opened between the Department of Climate Action and Google, owner of two of the most used applications: Google Maps and Waze, the latter for routes by car or motorcycle. . Work will also be carried out with Wikiloc, one of the applications most used by fans of exploring nature, whether on foot or by bicycle.
The applications will give priority to official routes, under the supervision of the Generalitat. It wants to promote a “more civic use of natural spaces”. Work is also being done to improve the information from mobile geolocation applications, to avoid frequent inaccurate or erroneous indications. The result is that whoever follows them ends up lost in the bush, sometimes putting themselves in danger.
To remedy this, the Generalitat will collaborate with Google to improve the information on the accesses and routes in the natural parks. "Until now, in some cases they had inaccurate or highly sensitive locations," Acció Climàtica points out.
Giving priority to official routes will prevent situations of overcrowding or avoid passing through places of high environmental sensitivity, maintains the Generalitat. More security for visitors and also better protection of the natural environment.
One of the great concerns of the competent administrations is the very high number of rescues in the natural environment, with more and more visitors putting themselves in danger when they go to the mountains.
Collaboration with Google and Wikiloc will have a long way to go. They want to incorporate real-time warnings in mobility applications to warn of specific alert situations. For example, at a time of high risk of forest fires, a situation that is more recurring every summer, or floods, warning of the temporary closure to access a natural park. Periods of special protection for flora and fauna could also be included, such as during a breeding season for a certain species with the prohibition to approach the area.
In a second phase, they want to include the indications and information from other administrations with powers in regulating access to natural spaces, as is the case of town halls.
