Assessing the dynamic vitality of public spaces in tourism-oriented traditional villages: a collaborative active perception method

Abstract Public spaces in traditional villages are the root of the development, preservation, and inheritance of rural cultural heritage. However, these spaces in tourism-oriented traditional villages continue to suffer from issues such as inconsistent vitality, more competition than cooperation, and inefficient revitalisation. Limited by the low precision of spatiotemporal data in rural areas, previous static and materialised vitality evaluation methods have failed to explore the dynamic nature of the flow of people in traditional village public spaces. This study investigated a collaborative active perception method using Wi-Fi probes and static snapshots to assess their dynamic vitality. An empirical study was conducted using Yantou Village in Lishui City, China, as an example. The empirical results indicate that this method can qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the spatiotemporal variations and the scenarios of the dynamic vitality of small public spaces in traditional villages, deepening the cognitive depth of their vitality from time and humanity, providing a basis for the spatiotemporal synergistic enhancement of their public spaces, and offering insights for their revitalisation.