Investigating tourism attractiveness in inland areas: Ecosystem services, open data and smart specializations

From the beginning of the 21stcentury, following major European and global initiatives such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) [1, 2] and The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity [3], the approach of Ecosystem Services could be considered an effective way to rebuild the traditional approach oriented to identify the impacts of territorial transformations in decision making processes. This research is oriented to contribute to the wider methodological framework of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [1]. Starting from this, the present work contributes to build interpretative models for the evaluation of a relevant part of the fourth class of ecosystem services: the territorial touristic attractiveness. The INVEST model, an open source toolkit, has been applied to assess the attractiveness of the Basilicata Region considering both natural and cultural heritage in order to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the investigated methodology, compared with Strategic development perspectives (also defined Smart Specialization Strategy).