Daily Visitors Estimate for Yanbaru
For six years, we recorded the number of cars, buses, and motorcycles that parked on the Cape Hedo every hour. We also used survey data from the Kunigami Village Office, which asked about 14,000 visitors how they traveled to Cape Hedo. Based on this measurement data, we recorded the daily number of tourists to Cape Hedo and the number of visitors to the information center, and compiled the trends by year.
Using these two sets of data, we estimated how many people visited the Cape Hedo each day. We then grouped days into 47 types — not only weekdays and weekends, but also three-day holidays, split holidays, Golden Week, and more. We calculated an average number of visitors for each type of day.
Next, we collected daily weather forecasts from the Japan Weather Association. These forecasts included the weather, temperature, humidity, rainfall, and wind speed for Kunigami Village. By comparing the weather with the 47 day-types, we created a formula that predicts how many people will visit.
Finally, we used the weather forecast for today, tomorrow, and the day after, plus the day-type, to predict the number of visitors. The difference between our predictions and the real numbers stayed within about 25% most of the time. Because the accuracy was good enough to be useful.
We also measured more than 10,000 cars at key road intersections in northern Okinawa (Kunigami Village) to find out how visitors split between different routes. Using this data, we estimated the number of people visiting the whole northern area.
We found that about 51% of all visitors to Kunigami Village go to the cape Hedo. Because of this, we can convert our visitor predictions for Hedo Point into estimated visitor numbers for the entire northern Okinawa region. These converted numbers are the ones we share on this website.
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Method file for Cape Hedo visitor count estimation
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File for Estimation: