Public information in visitor centres - Work package 5

Development of an innovative tool for general public information about all the participating protected areas and their conservation policy as well as about regional and local initiatives of sustainable land use and sustainable economic approaches.
The tool will provide an overview about the whole alpine space and the protected areas. (virtual visit of PA?s and an animated 3D simulation of the concerned alpine territories).
The presentation of the PA's will be translated in the 4 alpine languages and in English.

- First innovative tool presenting the PA?s of the Alps in an original form, giving illustrations about the national and international policies of nature protection in the Alps and about sustainable land use.
- Strengthening the interest of the visitors to visit other alpine regions and to support the international efforts of nature protection and sustainable development.
- Introduction of a new philosophy of common presentation of nature protection, of networking and of the importance of transboundary co-operation.

The project partners worked in 2006 on the content of the virtual visit tool: more than 750 hundreds of points of interest made of texts (5 languages) and multimedia content (images, films...) were created

A prototype of the software "ViViTo" (Virtual Visit Tool) was presented in January 2007.
The Swiss National Park has developped the complete version during the year 2007, integrating the multimedia and text content.
This first version of the tool was installed in 2 project partners' visitor centres in September 2007 for a trial period. The tool was then installed in the visitor centre(s) of each partner in November 2007.
In 2008, the ViViTo is available for the public in the visitor centres of the partners and also on the Internet through Google Earth:

>>German Version:
http://217.193.164.83/alpencom/ViViTo_german_NWL.kml
>>Slovenian Version:
http://217.193.164.83/alpencom/ViViTo_slovenian_NWL.kml
>>English Version:
http://217.193.164.83/alpencom/ViViTo_english_NWL.kml
>>Italian Version
http://217.193.164.83/alpencom/ViViTo_italian_NWL.kml
>>French Version
http://217.193.164.83/alpencom/ViViTo_french_NWL.kml

(the software Google Earth needs first to be installed on your computer)