El Turismo Residencial en Valle de Bravo, México. Una Interpretación de su Ciclo de Vida

El turismo residencial en Valle de Bravo (Estado de México) surge a partir de la consolidación de su presa, iniciando un proceso de transformación no sólo paisajística, sino territorial y socioeconómica, el cual además, ha marcado la pauta para llevar a este destino a convertirse en uno de los sitios turísticos más importantes del Estado de México. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo realizar una caracterización territorial y urbana de las etapas que ha tenido Valle de Bravo debido a la proliferación de residencias desde sus inicios como sitio turístico hasta la época actual, analizando su posible tendencia de crecimiento para los próximos años. Para poder realizar este análisis, se utilizó el modelo del Ciclo de Vida Turístico en el que diversas variables cuantitativas y cualitativas fueron utilizadas para ejemplificar cómo ha ido evolucionando Valle de Bravo. A través de éste análisis se demuestra que la zona está acercándose a límites de capacidad de carga, lo cual supone un mayor impacto en la zona principalmente en sus recursos más importantes: el espacio físico y, su alto valor paisajístico y natural.

A methodology for evacuation route planning inside buildings using geospatial technology

Evacuation route planning is a fundamental task for building engineering projects. Safety regulations are established so that all occupants are driven on time out of a building to a secure place when faced with an emergency situation. As an example, Spanish building code requires the planning of evacuation routes on large and, usually, public buildings. Engineers often plan these routes on single building projects, repeatedly assigning clusters of rooms to each emergency exit in a trial-and-error process. But problems may arise for a building complex where distribution and use changes make visual analysis cumbersome and sometimes unfeasible. This problem could be solved by using well-known spatial analysis techniques, implemented as a specialized software able to partially emulate engineer reasoning. In this paper we propose and test an easily reproducible methodology that makes use of free and open source software components for solving a case study. We ran a complete test on a building floor at the University of Alicante (Spain). This institution offers a web service (WFS) that allows retrieval of 2D geometries from any building within its campus. We demonstrate how geospatial technologies and computational geometry algorithms can be used for automating the creation and optimization of evacuation routes. In our case study, the engineers’ task is to verify that the load capacity of each emergency exit does not exceed the standards specified by Spain’s current regulations. Using Dijkstra’s algorithm, we obtain the shortest paths from every room to the most appropriate emergency exit. Once these paths are calculated, engineers can run simulations and validate, based on path statistics, different cluster configurations. Techniques and tools applied in this research would be helpful in the design and risk management phases of any complex building project.