Strategie per la promozione della gestione sostenibile delle grotte turistiche nello spazio transfrontaliero

The project addresses the Italia-Francia Marittimo common challenge No. 2 “The territory and its environment at the center” through interventions aimed at improving the protection of nature and biodiversity in cave environments. Specifically, the project aims to promote sustainable management of tourist caves in the Italy-France Maritime program area through the following activities: monitoring of the cave environment, development of joint strategies for sustainable management of tourist caves, and implementation of communication, awareness, environmental education, and virtual exploration of caves. Regarding the monitoring of the cave environment, the project involves the implementation of an innovative monitoring system to detect and share in near-real time the physical environmental parameters of tourist caves; this will be complemented by the detection of biospeleological parameters and visitor presence. The goal is to contribute to the sustainable management of tourist caves through the use of innovative technological tools that can generate valuable data for use in implementing management strategies. Through this experience, a guide to tools and methods for observing key parameters for sustainable management of tourist caves will be developed as one of the project outputs. The project also includes a joint strategy for the sustainable management of tourist caves, with the main objective of promoting the preservation of the environmental status of tourist caves through pilot actions to develop innovative management models. The planned outputs for this component include the deployment of a joint strategy for sustainable management of tourist caves and the creation of a sustainable cave management model. In addition to communication activities, the project includes specific outreach, environmental education and virtual exploration interventions through the development of environmental education materials, including educational kits, 3-D models, virtual tours and interactive simulations to increase the environmental awareness in relation to the enjoyment of underground environments. The main objective is to promote responsible behavior among visitors of tourist caves. Outputs planned for this component include the creation of environmental education materials and the creation of virtual tours of caves. A specific investment is planned on innovative multimedia equipments, including virtual reality and augmented reality viewers, that will make it possible to use the materials developed as part of the project to implement alternative ways of enjoying the caves, which can expand the audience of visitors able to explore the caves, reducing the direct impact on the caves and facilitating potential visitors who, for economic reasons or because they are otherwise abled, are unable to visit the underground systems in person. These technologies will also be used as environmental education tools, aimed at specific target groups, in order to amplify the value of the data collected improve the illustration of the characteristics of karst systems and the need for safeguarding and sustainable management. The project will develop a set of outputs and products through which to achieve measurable impact in the cross-border area, with results that will be deployed during the course of the project and in subsequent years. The project addresses common challenge no. 2 "Territory and its environment at the center" through interventions aimed at improving the protection of nature and biodiversity in underground environments. These environments represent a fundamental environmental resource in karst areas, which are well represented in the Maritime program regions, where practically identical geological structures are observed in the PACA Region and in Sardinia, with karst systems consequently showing strong analogies. Safeguarding this resource has potential