Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries fundamentally arising from mobility as a form of capital. In destination islands that have a delicate ecosystem to maintain, this source of income can become problematic in terms of sustainability. A difficulty in making people aware of this issue is also represented by the fact that such sustainability-related issues (and their causes) are often not “visible” to citizens. To foster awareness about the relationship between sustainability and tourism in well-known destinations, we design a platform that engages users at two levels of participation: i. at the IoT and sensors level, in order to let them becoming providers of big data, deploying and enlarging the pervasive infrastructure; ii. at the (big) data visualization level, with the aim of engaging them in making sense of large volumes of data related to sustainability. This paper presents the design and implementation of a real-world experience where a low-cost collaborative platform made it possible to sense and visualize tourist flows and urban data into a rich interactive map-based visualization, open to the local communities. We deployed our case study in the Madeira archipelago, engaging locals and visitors of the island in two exploratory studies focused on measuring the impact of providing users with meaningful representations of tourism flows and related unperceivable aspects that affect the environmental sustainability. Analysing the findings of the two studies, we discuss the potentiality of using such a system to make sense of big data, fostering awareness about sustainability issues, and we point to future open challenges about citizens’ participation in sensing and making sense of big data.

旅游业是世界上最大的产业之一，从根本上说，流动性是一种资本形式。在需要维持脆弱生态系统的目的地岛屿，这种收入来源在可持续性方面可能会成为问题。让人们意识到这个问题的困难还体现在这样一个事实，即此类与可持续性相关的问题（及其原因）通常对公民来说并不“可见”。为了培养人们对知名目的地的可持续性与旅游业之间关系的认识，我们设计了一个平台，让用户参与两个层次：i。在物联网和传感器层面，为了让他们成为大数据的提供者，部署和扩大无处不在的基础设施；二. 在（大）数据可视化层面，目的是让他们了解与可持续性相关的大量数据。本文介绍了真实世界体验的设计和实施，在该体验中，低成本协作平台可以将旅游流量和城市数据感知和可视化为丰富的交互式基于地图的可视化，并向当地社区开放。我们在马德拉群岛部署了我们的案例研究，让岛上的当地人和游客参与两项探索性研究，重点是衡量为用户提供有意义的旅游流量代表和影响环境可持续性的相关不可感知方面的影响。通过分析这两项研究的结果，我们讨论了使用这样一个系统来理解大数据、培养对可持续性问题的认识的潜力，