Big data assists tourism at China's world heritage site

A meteorological big data system has been installed at Mount Fanjing, a world heritage site in Southwest China's Guizhou province, to boost winter tourism.

The weather bureau of the city of Tongren invested over 4 million yuan (about $571,000) to build 12 unmanned automatic weather stations every 250 meters up the mountain from its foot, to dynamically monitor the air pressure, temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind direction and speed, negative oxygen ions and UV intensity at different altitudes.

Thanks to the system and an intelligent information distributing platform, tourists can receive alerts if it is too foggy to view the sunrise at the mountain's peak, or notifications if the temperature drops.

Besides the real-time weather forecasts, special scenery forecasts covering blooming flowers, cloud formations and other photogenic phenomena will also be provided to tourists.

Mount Fanjing was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2018 at the 42nd World Heritage Committee meeting in Bahrain.