Adaptive Agent Architectures in Modern Virtual Games

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

SIS 2017. Statistics and Data Science: new challenges, new generations

The 2017 SIS Conference aims to highlight the crucial role of the Statistics in Data Science. In this new domain of ‘meaning’ extracted from the data, the increasing amount of produced and available data in databases, nowadays, has brought new challenges. That involves different fields of statistics, machine learning, information and computer science, optimization, pattern recognition. These afford together a considerable contribute in the analysis of ‘Big data’, open data, relational and complex data, structured and no-structured. The interest is to collect the contributes which provide from the different domains of Statistics, in the high dimensional data quality validation, sampling extraction, dimensional reduction, pattern selection, data modelling, testing hypotheses and confirming conclusions drawn from the data

Local community perceptions of tourism as a development tool

In recent decades tourism development has expanded on most Mediterranean islands. Focusing on the island of Crete, this study recognises tourism as a highly visible and controversial component of change. The existence of the necessary infrastructure, the natural beauty, the climate, the culture and the history have contributed to tourism expansion, with Crete now attracting approximately 25 percent of foreign tourist arrivals and 55 percent of the total foreign exchange earnings of Greece. The perceptions of the local community in tourism were studied using personal interviews with three community groups: local authority officials, residents and tourism business owners and managers. The aim was to examine their views on tourism development, in an attempt to establish overall desired directions for tourism development and to suggest effective tourism strategies and policies to reinforce positive outcomes and alleviate problems resulting from previous unplanned tourism development. The research findings identify much agreement among the three community groups suggesting that it is feasible to further develop tourism with the support of the community. Although the areas used in the sample were in the maturity stage of Butler's (1980) life cycle model and therefore it might be expected that the community would be at the antagonism stage of Doxey's (1975) model, this was not suggested by the findings. Tourism is viewed positively as a development option, and further tourism development, with conditions attached, is supported. The expansion of tourism has brought economic gains, employment creation, increased population, enhanced community infrastructure and cultural and environmental preservation. However, there is limited co-ordination of tourism activities and insufficient collaboration between the public and private sector. In addition, the island is dependent on foreign tour operators, and the tourism industry is uneven geographically and seasonally. Tourism has modified traditions and has affected the environment and society. Since community perceptions match reality (what is on the ground from development), problems are real and it is necessary to find solutions for their amelioration. As a result, policy implications emerging from the results presented in this thesis are discussed and future strategies are suggested

Proceedings of the WABER 2017 Conference

The scientific information published in peer-reviewed outlets carries special status, and confers unique responsibilities on editors and authors. We must protect the integrity of the scientific process by publishing only manuscripts that have been properly peer-reviewed by scientific reviewers and confirmed by editors to be of sufficient quality. I confirm that all papers in the WABER 2017 Conference Proceedings have been through a peer review process involving initial screening of abstracts, review of full papers by at least two referees, reporting of comments to authors, revision of papers by authors, and reevaluation of re-submitted papers to ensure quality of content. It is the policy of the West Africa Built Environment Research (WABER) Conference that all papers must go through a systematic peer review process involving examination by at least two referees who are knowledgeable on the subject. A paper is only accepted for publication in the conference proceedings based on the recommendation of the reviewers and decision of the editors. The names and affiliation of members of the Scientific Committee & Review Panel for WABER 2017 Conference are published in the Conference Proceedings and on our website www.waberconference.com Papers in the WABER Conference Proceedings are published open access on the conference website www.waberconference.com to facilitate public access to the research papers and wider dissemination of the scientific knowledge