A Scale-Aware Web GIS Architecture for Village-Level Exploratory Spatial Interaction: Design, Implementation and Scenario Evaluation

Abstract

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, independent travel has become a tourism trend, and the use of digital tools to support exploratory spatial interaction in rural tourism has increased. While Web-Based Geographic Information Systems (Web GIS) have been widely applied in tourism research, most of these applications focus on visualization or promotion, with few examining the application of village-based exploratory spatial interaction tools. This research introduces DTExplorer, a scale-aware Web GIS application powered by curated spatial data. DTExplorer enables category- and radius-based exploration of curated Points of Interest (POIs), reflecting how independent travelers make decisions in rural destinations, where proximity, thematic relevance, and clustering of visits are the main spatial choice factors. The system was developed using a research and development (R&D) approach and implemented as a Web GIS application using Node.js, JavaScript, MySQL, Google Maps and an interactive mapping interface. DTExplorer has been tested and passed functional and scenario testing. These findings indicate that at the village level, the main focus of effective exploratory spatial interaction has not been based on analytical complexity and optimization-based models. Rather, the efficacy of exploratory interaction arises through the spatial scale congruence, user decision reasoning, and controlled POI data governance. Combining curated POI data with simple spatial operations such as proximity and category-based filtering, DTExplorer demonstrates the potential of simple GIS functions to be applied as meaningful exploratory spatial interaction in rural tourism situations. This study contributes to applied geoinformatics by redefining exploratory spatial interaction in rural tourism as a scale-aware, design-oriented process rather than an analytical one. This work advances theoretical knowledge on adapting Web GIS for small-scale destinations and demonstrates the strategic importance of curated spatial data in community-based tourism decision-making.