All roads lead to the places of your interest: An on-demand, ride-sharing visitor transport service

Successful visitor transport within large tourist sites should balance visitor experience and operating costs. Inspired by the model of sharing economy, we design a “user-centered” intelligent visitor transport system to improve the efficiency and quality of experience of transport service in large tourist sites. The system’s core approach is a three-stage heuristic model based on Pareto optimality. Results of the proposed service indicate a drastic reduction of visitor delay time and an improvement in energy efficiency. The proposed scheduling schemes for organizers are more diversified and adaptable than the existing service

Exploration Of New Methods In Long Distance Transportation Data Collection And Tourism Travel In Vermont

ABSTRACT Human transportation patterns have continued to shift and increase in rate as technology has made travel between spatially disparate locations more feasible. These movements are responsible for approximately one third of global carbon emissions, and account for one half of Vermont’s greenhouse gas output. Modeling transportation behaviors is difficult due to changing travel patterns and issues of surveying human participants. Long distance travel patterns are especially difficult and have not received the attention that urban mobility has within the literature. In this Masters thesis, I describe current methods of transportation data collection and propose new methods, as well as attempt to quantify the impact on Vermont’s roadways of the transportation-based tourism sector. In the first chapter of this thesis, I describe a GPS-based travel survey conducted over the course of one year, coupled with interview data of long distance trips undertaken by 10 participants. Long distance travel has historically been underrepresented in travel surveying due to its infrequency, resulting in decreased likelihood of capturing a long distance trip in a short travel study. By extracting points at intervals from the GPS dataset, it becomes possible to determine accuracy of trip matching between the two datasets with adjusted data collection methods. The second chapter examines transportation related to tourism in Vermont. As one of Vermont’s largest industry sectors, economic impact has been of particular interest to state planners. However, limited analyses of the transportation impacts of this sector are currently available. My research models route choice of drive through tourists, whom constitute 40% of visitors, attempting to begin quantifying tourist mileage and CO2 emissions within the state. Together, these studies expand knowledge on long distance transport data collection and the role of tourism in Vermont’s transportation mileage

"Applications of Intelligent Systems in Tourism: Relevant Methods"

"This article presents a literature review of Intelligent Systems applications in Tourism in different parts of the world. The review focuses on the most relevant methods in free and paid databases, in English and Spanish. Most of the works deal with methodologies based on artificial intelligence, such as expert systems, fuzzy logic, machine learning, data mining, neural networks, genetic algorithms. In the review, several characteristics of the systems have been taken into account, such as, knowledge base, actors in the operation of the system, types of tourists, usefulness or not in space and time. According to the review it was found that most of the researches are deterministic models, the most used methodology in tourism are the expert systems based on rules, observing an emerging innovation in metaheuristics, mainly genetic algorithms and intelligent systems with knowledge base based on optimization methods for route choice or optimal visit plan. It is expected that this work serves to give a general perspective on the application of intelligent systems in the area of tourism, as well as a work that consolidates background for work in this area of research.

A graph-based approach for sustainable walking tour recommendations: The case of Lisbon overcrowding

Motivation: Mass tourism brought problems of carrying capacity in city management. More and more tourists flock to the most famous zones, thereby causing overcrowding situations, while other sustainable points of interest (POIs) are under-visited. Goal: Allow local tourism managing authorities to assemble a database of georeferenced sustainable POIs. Then, combine the latter with local crowding data and implement a walking tour recommender system. Proposal: A web platform to experts adds, in an intuitive way by using a map,POIs with sustainable data. Creating a new database of Lisbon (case of study) sustainable POIs. Implement a tour generator graph-algorithm that receives: user preferences, tour constraints, sustainable POIs and crowd data. Providing a customize tour, that obeys the domain constraints, suggests sustainable POIs and avoids the more crowded areas. Solving a multicriteria shortest path problem. Conclusion: Evidence is provided on the feasibility of computing walking tour recommendations, meeting multiple and complex constraints, namely by promoting sustainability and mitigating crowding, using a graph search algorithm.Motivação: O turismo em massa trouxe problemas de controlo da capacidade de carga na gestão das cidades. Os turistas, em número crescente, aglomeram-se nas zonas mais famosas, causando aí situações de sobrelotação, enquanto outros pontos de interesse (POIs, em Inglês) sustentáveis são sub-visitados. Objetivo: Permitir que as autoridades gestoras do turismo local montem uma base de dados de POIs sustentáveis, georreferenciados. Em seguida, combinar estes últimos com os dados de aglomeração local e implementar um sistema de recomendação de passeios turísticos pedestres. Proposta: Uma plataforma web para que o especialistas adicionem, de forma intuitiva através de um mapa, os pontos de interesse sustentáveis. Implementar um algoritmo de grafos, que gera caminhos e que recebe: as preferências do utilizador, as restrições do domínio do caminho, pontos de interesse sustentáveis e dados de congestionamento. Fornecendo assim, um caminho personalizado que obdece às restrições, sugere pontos de interesse sustentáveis e evita as áreas mais movimentadas. Deste modo, resolve o problema do caminho mais curto com multicriterias. Conclusão: São fornecidas evidências sobre a viabilidade de computar recomendações de passeios turísticos a pé, atendendo a restrições múltiplas e complexas, nomeadamente promovendo a sustentabilidade e mitigando a superlotação, usando um algoritmo de pesquisa em grafos

Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings

Modern cities are facing the challenge of combining competitiveness at the global city scale and sustainable urban development to become smart cities. A smart city is a high-tech, intensive and advanced city that connects people, information, and city elements using new technologies in order to create a sustainable, greener city; competitive and innovative commerce; and an increased quality of life. This Special Issue collects the recent advancements in smart cities and covers different topics and aspects

Determinants of the Likelihood of Tourist Spending in Cultural Micro-Destinations: Type, Timing, and Distance of the Activity as Predictors

Although tourism expenditure has long been a pertinent topic in studies dealing with cultural tourism, its importance in recent years has become even more marked due to the consequences of low-cost tourism that many destinations are suffering. This need has been further aggravated by the impact of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. Now, the only sustainable means of increasing destination revenue is to generate greater financial profitability of tourism-related activities, as opposed to increasing tourist volumes. The present study analyzes the determinants of the likelihood of tourist spending in an urbancultural destination whose economic sustainability is being threatened by low-cost tourism. To this end, all the tourism activities of the sample (672 in total) were recorded in real time during the stay via a purpose-designed mobile application. Given the nested structure of the sample, multilevel modeling was used: the characteristics of the different tourism activities were used as predictor variables, while characteristics of the tourist were used as control variables. Regarding the former, the results suggest that spending is more likely at the beginning of the stay and in relation to non-cultural tourism activities (restaurants, shopping, transport, etc.). An interaction effect between activity location and timing (beginning vs. end of stay) was also demonstrated: at the beginning of the stay, the greater likelihood of spending was related to services or attractions outside the city center; and, toward the end, spending patterns become more static, based close to the city center. The aim is to explain the probability of tourist expenditure at each spending opportunity, thus contributing to the current knowledge of total tourist spending. Knowledge of tourist expenditure patterns is a prerequisite for raising profitability-per-tourist when increasing visitor volumes is not an option.State Research Agency PID2019-110941RB-I00/SRAJunta de Andalucia B-SEJ-381-UGR18European Commission B-SEJ-381-UGR1

Schematic bus transit maps for the web using genetic algorithms

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesThe octilinear schematic map, layout recognized worldwide in metro maps, is an important transit informative tool. This research investigates how algorithms for the visualization of schematic maps can be availed in mobile web devices context in order to empower the efficiency in transmitting information of bus transit maps. A genetic algorithm for path octilinear schematization technique has been used and tested to create the schematic data. Location-based and interactivity functionalities were embedded to the resulting digital maps in order to create personalized maps to meet specific user needs. A prototype of a web application and real transit data of the city of Castellón in Spain was used to test the methodology. The results have shown that real time schematizations open possibilities concerning usability that add extra value to schematic transit maps. Additionally, suggested improvements have been made to the genetic algorithm and performance tests show that genetic algorithms are adequate, in terms of efficiency, to sketch bus transit maps automatically

Tracked to protect - Spatiotemporal dynamics of recreational boating in sensitive marine natural areas

In many coastal areas, high numbers of recreationists may exceed ecological capacities. Careful monitoring of visitor flows is a first prerequisite for coastal area management. We show how AIS ship data can be translated into interpretable information on recreational boats and investigate whether AIS can provide monitoring information when compared to nature conservation policy targets. In the Wadden Sea UNESCO World Heritage Site we used nearly 9 million data points to create spatiotemporal patterns for the 2018 recreation season. We combined this with shipping lanes and bathymetry data and compared the resulting patterns with nature protection regulations. Our results show that most of the traffic is concentrated around tidal channels. We also show that exceeding speed limits is not predominant behaviour, but the effect of speeding on birds and seals might be more severe than the data suggests. We mapped favourite tidal flat moor activities, and observed where this occurs in Marine Protected Areas. We conclude that AIS analysis can provide valuable recreational boating monitoring, relevant to sensitive coastal area management in the entire Dutch Wadden Sea for the full recreational season. Broader integration of AIS with radar data and ecological data can add to the power of using AIS

Advances in Public Transport Platform for the Development of Sustainability Cities

Modern societies demand high and varied mobility, which in turn requires a complex transport system adapted to social needs that guarantees the movement of people and goods in an economically efficient and safe way, but all are subject to a new environmental rationality and the new logic of the paradigm of sustainability. From this perspective, an efficient and flexible transport system that provides intelligent and sustainable mobility patterns is essential to our economy and our quality of life. The current transport system poses growing and significant challenges for the environment, human health, and sustainability, while current mobility schemes have focused much more on the private vehicle that has conditioned both the lifestyles of citizens and cities, as well as urban and territorial sustainability. Transport has a very considerable weight in the framework of sustainable development due to environmental pressures, associated social and economic effects, and interrelations with other sectors. The continuous growth that this sector has experienced over the last few years and its foreseeable increase, even considering the change in trends due to the current situation of generalized crisis, make the challenge of sustainable transport a strategic priority at local, national, European, and global levels. This Special Issue will pay attention to all those research approaches focused on the relationship between evolution in the area of transport with a high incidence in the environment from the perspective of efficiency

The Need of Multidisciplinary Approaches and Engineering Tools for the Development and Implementation of the Smart City Paradigm

This paper is motivated by the concept that the successful, effective, and sustainable implementation of the smart city paradigm requires a close cooperation among researchers with different, complementary interests and, in most cases, a multidisciplinary approach. It first briefly discusses how such a multidisciplinary methodology, transversal to various disciplines such as architecture, computer science, civil engineering, electrical, electronic and telecommunication engineering, social science and behavioral science, etc., can be successfully employed for the development of suitable modeling tools and real solutions of such sociotechnical systems. Then, the paper presents some pilot projects accomplished by the authors within the framework of some major European Union (EU) and national research programs, also involving the Bologna municipality and some of the key players of the smart city industry. Each project, characterized by different and complementary approaches/modeling tools, is illustrated along with the relevant contextualization and the advancements with respect to the state of the art