A mobile tour guide app for sustainable tourism

Portugal has had a flourishing tourism sector for the past few years. In fact, Portugal’s tourism boom has made the industry one of the biggest contributors to the national economy and the largest employer. In the year 2019, Portugal had a total of 27 million tourists, surpassing once again the record established in the previous year. However, tourism also brings a series of unintended negative side effects, such as overcrowding. The Santa Maria Maior historic district in Lisbon is being particularly affected by this problem. The work undertaken in this dissertation is part of the Sustainable Tourism Crowding project, that aims to mitigate the overcrowding phenomenon in this district, by fostering a balanced distribution of visitors while promoting the visitation of sustainable points of interest. This dissertation focuses on developing a mobile app prototype targeted at tourists, through which these sustainable walking tour recommendations can be delivered. To validate the functional requirements of the prototype, more specifically the trip creation process, a series of unit tests, integration tests, and manual tests were developed. To evaluate the usability of the prototype, a user-centered approach was adopted during the design stage, in which two usability techniques were conducted with members of ISCTE’s research center ISTAR and partners from the Junta de Freguesia de Santa Maria Maior, that guided and validated the decisions made. The achieved prototype contains mechanisms for measuring tourists’ adherence to the recommended tours using the Dynamic Time Warping algorithm, which raises new research opportunities on tourists’ behaviour.O desenvolvimento próspero do setor turístico em Portugal nos últimos anos fez da indústria um dos maiores contribuintes para a economia nacional e o maior empregador do país. No ano de 2019, Portugal recebeu um total de 27 milhões de turistas, ultrapassando uma vez mais uma vez o recorde estabelecido no ano anterior. No entanto, o turismo traz também uma série de efeitos secundários negativos não intencionais, tais como overcrowding. A freguesia histórica de Santa Maria Maior em Lisboa está a ser particularmente afetada por este problema. O trabalho desenvolvido nesta dissertação faz parte do projeto de pesquisa Sustainable Tourism Crowding, que visa mitigar o fenómeno de overcrowding nesta freguesia, promovendo uma distribuição equilibrada dos visitantes e incentivando a visita de pontos de interesse sustentáveis. Esta dissertação foca-se no desenvolvimento de uma aplicação móvel protótipo destinada a turistas, através do qual recebem recomendações de visitas sustentáveis. Para validar os requisitos funcionais do protótipo, mais especificamente o processo de criação de visitas, foram desenvolvidos testes unitários, testes de integração, e testes manuais. Para avaliar a usabilidade do protótipo, foi adotada uma abordagem centrada no utilizador durante a fase de conceção, em que foram utilizadas duas técnicas de usabilidade em parceria com o ISTAR (centro de investigação do ISCTE) e com a Junta de Freguesia de Santa Maria Maior, cujos resultados guiaram e validaram as decisões tomadas. O protótipo desenvolvido contém mecanismos para medir a aderência dos turistas às recomendações sugeridas através do algoritmo Dynamic Time Warping, proporcionando novas oportunidades de pesquisa nesta área

Integrating Haptic Feedback into Mobile Location Based Services

Haptics is a feedback technology that takes advantage of the human sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions to a haptic-enabled device such as a mobile phone. Historically, human-computer interaction has been visual - text and images on the screen. Haptic feedback can be an important additional method especially in Mobile Location Based Services such as knowledge discovery, pedestrian navigation and notification systems. A knowledge discovery system called the Haptic GeoWand is a low interaction system that allows users to query geo-tagged data around them by using a point-and-scan technique with their mobile device. Haptic Pedestrian is a navigation system for walkers. Four prototypes have been developed classified according to the user’s guidance requirements, the user type (based on spatial skills), and overall system complexity. Haptic Transit is a notification system that provides spatial information to the users of public transport. In all these systems, haptic feedback is used to convey information about location, orientation, density and distance by use of the vibration alarm with varying frequencies and patterns to help understand the physical environment. Trials elicited positive responses from the users who see benefit in being provided with a “heads up” approach to mobile navigation. Results from a memory recall test show that the users of haptic feedback for navigation had better memory recall of the region traversed than the users of landmark images. Haptics integrated into a multi-modal navigation system provides more usable, less distracting but more effective interaction than conventional systems. Enhancements to the current work could include integration of contextual information, detailed large-scale user trials and the exploration of using haptics within confined indoor spaces

On the development of Voice over IP

This record of study documents the experience acquired during my internship at Sonus Networks, Inc. for the Doctor of Engineering Program. In this record of study, I have surveyed and analyzed the current standardization status of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) security and proposed an Internet draft on secure retargeting and response identity. The draft provides a simple and comprehensive solution to the response identity, call recipient identity and intermediate server retargeting problems in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) call setup process. To support product line development and enable product evolution in the quickly growing VoIP market, I have proposed a generic development framework for SIP application servers. The common and open architecture of the framework supports multiple products development and facilitates integration of new service modules. The systematical reuse of proven software design and implementation enables companies to reduce the development cost and shorten the time-to-market. As the development and diffusion of VoIP can never be isolated from the social sphere, I have investigated the current status, influence and interaction of three most important factors: standardization, market forces and government regulation on the development and diffusion of VoIP. The worldwide deregulation and market privatization have caused the transition of the standards development model. This transition in turn influences the market diffusion. Other than standardization, market forces including customer needs, the revenue pressure on carriers and vendors, competitive and economic environment, social culture and regulation uncertainties create both threats and opportunities. I have examined market drivers and obstacles in the current VoIP adoption stage, analyzed current VoIP market players and their strategies, and predicted the direction of VoIP business. The regulation creates the macro environment in which VoIP develops and diffuses. I have explored modern telecommunications regulation principles based on which government makes decisions on most current issues, including 911 support, mergers and acquisitions, interconnection obligation and leasing rights, rate structure and universal service fees

Supporting teacher orchestration of across-spaces learning situations

La tesis doctoral trata sobre la orquestación de situaciones de aprendizaje “a través de espacios” (across-spaces, AS, en inglés): situaciones de aprendizaje que integran actividades que tienen lugar en múltiples espacios físicos y virtuales, y donde se da una transición suave, o continua, entre los distintos espacios. En particular, la tesis intenta proporcionar herramientas conceptuales y tecnológicas para apoyar a los docentes en la orquestación de este tipo de situaciones de aprendizaje, que puedan incluir espacios físicos, web y mundos virtuales 3D. Siguiendo la Metodología de Investigación de Desarrollo de Sistemas, y con un paradigma de investigación interpretativo subyacente, se proponen dos constructos (modelo de POI y noción de cubo de aprendizaje o learning bucket) y dos sistemas (GLUEPS-AR y Bucket-Server), para ayudar a los docentes en la orquestación de situaciones de aprendizaje AS. Para la evaluación de las propuestas, se realizaron múltiples análisis de características, estudios pilotos y estudios de evaluación, enmarcados en un modelo de evaluación “receptivo”Departamento de Teoría de la Señal y Comunicaciones e Ingeniería TelemáticaNota: In reference to IEEE copyrighted material which is used with permission in this thesis, the IEEE does not endorse any of Universidad de Valladolid's products or services. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. If interested in reprinting/republishing IEEE copyrighted material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution, please go to http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/rights_link.html to learn how to obtain a License from RightsLink. If applicable, University Microfilms and/or ProQuest Library, or the Archives of Canada may supply single copies of the dissertation

31th International Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases

Information modelling is becoming more and more important topic for researchers, designers, and users of information systems.The amount and complexity of information itself, the number of abstractionlevels of information, and the size of databases and knowledge bases arecontinuously growing. Conceptual modelling is one of the sub-areas ofinformation modelling. The aim of this conference is to bring together experts from different areas of computer science and other disciplines, who have a common interest in understanding and solving problems on information modelling and knowledge bases, as well as applying the results of research to practice. We also aim to recognize and study new areas on modelling and knowledge bases to which more attention should be paid. Therefore philosophy and logic, cognitive science, knowledge management, linguistics and management science are relevant areas, too. In the conference, there will be three categories of presentations, i.e. full papers, short papers and position papers

Recreation, tourism and nature in a changing world : proceedings of the fifth international conference on monitoring and management of visitor flows in recreational and protected areas : Wageningen, the Netherlands, May 30-June 3, 2010

Proceedings of the fifth international conference on monitoring and management of visitor flows in recreational and protected areas : Wageningen, the Netherlands, May 30-June 3, 201

Contextual Social Networking

The thesis centers around the multi-faceted research question of how contexts may be detected and derived that can be used for new context aware Social Networking services and for improving the usefulness of existing Social Networking services, giving rise to the notion of Contextual Social Networking. In a first foundational part, we characterize the closely related fields of Contextual-, Mobile-, and Decentralized Social Networking using different methods and focusing on different detailed aspects. A second part focuses on the question of how short-term and long-term social contexts as especially interesting forms of context for Social Networking may be derived. We focus on NLP based methods for the characterization of social relations as a typical form of long-term social contexts and on Mobile Social Signal Processing methods for deriving short-term social contexts on the basis of geometry of interaction and audio. We furthermore investigate, how personal social agents may combine such social context elements on various levels of abstraction. The third part discusses new and improved context aware Social Networking service concepts. We investigate special forms of awareness services, new forms of social information retrieval, social recommender systems, context aware privacy concepts and services and platforms supporting Open Innovation and creative processes. This version of the thesis does not contain the included publications because of copyrights of the journals etc. Contact in terms of the version with all included publications: Georg Groh, [email protected] zentrale Gegenstand der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die vielschichtige Frage, wie Kontexte detektiert und abgeleitet werden können, die dazu dienen können, neuartige kontextbewusste Social Networking Dienste zu schaffen und bestehende Dienste in ihrem Nutzwert zu verbessern. Die (noch nicht abgeschlossene) erfolgreiche Umsetzung dieses Programmes führt auf ein Konzept, das man als Contextual Social Networking bezeichnen kann. In einem grundlegenden ersten Teil werden die eng zusammenhängenden Gebiete Contextual Social Networking, Mobile Social Networking und Decentralized Social Networking mit verschiedenen Methoden und unter Fokussierung auf verschiedene Detail-Aspekte näher beleuchtet und in Zusammenhang gesetzt. Ein zweiter Teil behandelt die Frage, wie soziale Kurzzeit- und Langzeit-Kontexte als für das Social Networking besonders interessante Formen von Kontext gemessen und abgeleitet werden können. Ein Fokus liegt hierbei auf NLP Methoden zur Charakterisierung sozialer Beziehungen als einer typischen Form von sozialem Langzeit-Kontext. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt liegt auf Methoden aus dem Mobile Social Signal Processing zur Ableitung sinnvoller sozialer Kurzzeit-Kontexte auf der Basis von Interaktionsgeometrien und Audio-Daten. Es wird ferner untersucht, wie persönliche soziale Agenten Kontext-Elemente verschiedener Abstraktionsgrade miteinander kombinieren können. Der dritte Teil behandelt neuartige und verbesserte Konzepte für kontextbewusste Social Networking Dienste. Es werden spezielle Formen von Awareness Diensten, neue Formen von sozialem Information Retrieval, Konzepte für kontextbewusstes Privacy Management und Dienste und Plattformen zur Unterstützung von Open Innovation und Kreativität untersucht und vorgestellt. Diese Version der Habilitationsschrift enthält die inkludierten Publikationen zurVermeidung von Copyright-Verletzungen auf Seiten der Journals u.a. nicht. Kontakt in Bezug auf die Version mit allen inkludierten Publikationen: Georg Groh, [email protected]

Human-Computer Interaction

In this book the reader will find a collection of 31 papers presenting different facets of Human Computer Interaction, the result of research projects and experiments as well as new approaches to design user interfaces. The book is organized according to the following main topics in a sequential order: new interaction paradigms, multimodality, usability studies on several interaction mechanisms, human factors, universal design and development methodologies and tools