Towards a finer heritage management: Evaluating the tourism carrying capacity using an agent-based model

As one of the most important areas in the Palace Museum, Beijing, China, the Hall of Mental Cultivation had suffered from overcrowding of visitors before it was closed in 2016 for conservation. Preparing for the reopening in 2020, the Palace Museum decided to take the chance and initiate finer-grained tourism management in the Hall. This research intends to provide an audio-guided touring program by dynamically evaluating the Tourism Carrying Capacity (TCC) with the highlight spots in the Hall, to operate the touring program spatiotemporally. Framing an optimization problem for the touring program, an agent-based simulator, Thunderhead Pathfinder, originally developed for evacuation in the emergency, is utilized to verify the performance of the touring system. The simulation shows that the proposed touring program could precisely fit all the key requirements to improve the visitors' experience, to guarantee heritage safety, and to ensure more efficient management.