Enabling Sustainable Trail Management: A System-Level Framework for Digital Technologies and Integration in Walking Infrastructures

Walking tourism is increasingly supported by a wide range of digital technologies that are crucial for mitigating environmental impacts and promoting sustainable territorial development, yet their adoption remains fragmented and rarely interpreted within a unified infrastructure perspective. While systemic infrastructure perspectives are well-established in smart city and transport literature, existing studies on walking trails still tend to focus on individual tools or user-oriented applications. Drawing upon broader smart mobility concepts, this paper proposes a system-level framework, the SmartTrail Framework (STF), for the classification, functional interpretation and integration assessment of digital technologies in walking trail infrastructures. The framework is conceived as a transferable analytical and operational instrument applicable both to academic literature and to real-world trail systems, supporting infrastructure assessment, planning and digital maturity evaluation. Following an initial bibliometric analysis of a broader Scopus dataset comprising 1697 records, a structured literature review of 253 publications was conducted to operationalise and illustrate the framework through the systematic classification of digital technologies, the mapping of functional requirements, and the assessment of Integration Levels (IL). The STF integrates three analytical dimensions: a technology domain taxonomy (six categories), a functional requirement model (five infrastructure functions) and an IL scheme (IL0–IL3) that characterises the degree of systemic coherence among digital components. The results reveal a critical functional imbalance in current digitalisation: while user-oriented navigation and information services are widely adopted, backend infrastructure functions, particularly safety and operational logistics, remain severely underdeveloped, keeping most trail systems trapped in low-integration configurations. Applied to real-world trail systems, the framework enables the identification of architectural gaps, the prioritisation of integration investments and the definition of development pathways towards intelligent trail ecosystems. The paper aims to contribute to field research by providing a structured interpretative framework for understanding digital technologies as infrastructural components of walking trails. This supports a shift from tool-based thinking to system-based infrastructure design and offers practical implications for planners, managers and policymakers involved in the development of smart, resilient and environmentally sustainable trail infrastructures.