Sustainable Mobility for Island Destinations

This open access book presents the findings of the CIVITAS DESTINATIONS project regarding the link between mobility and tourism in urban areas and the complications tourist destinations face in becoming more sustainable. It integrates the tourist mobility needs and the associated fluctuation impacts in the design of mobility solutions in order to enforce the accessibility, attractiveness, efficiency and sustainability of transport services and infrastructure for both residents and tourists in island cities such as Rethymno, Crete, and Valetta, Malta. Sustainable Mobility for Island Destinations contains contributions from highly experienced academics, engineers, and planners in the area of sustainable tourism, mobility services, and smart solutions design companies assisting: the change of the mind set in insular and tourism areas; the adoption of green mobility systems and services; and monitoring the environmental benefits to assist towards the Climate Change. It explores the challenges tourist islands face, such as the seasonal fluxes in transport usage, the pressures of tourism to provide aesthetic green spaces, and the space issues of being an island in relation to economic potential and infrastructure construction. The book suggests areas for future research, and implementation of innovative systems and policies. It will be of interest to academics, planners, decision makers, and environmentalists

Sustainable Mobility for Island Destinations

This open access book presents the findings of the CIVITAS DESTINATIONS project regarding the link between mobility and tourism in urban areas and the complications tourist destinations face in becoming more sustainable. It integrates the tourist mobility needs and the associated fluctuation impacts in the design of mobility solutions in order to enforce the accessibility, attractiveness, efficiency and sustainability of transport services and infrastructure for both residents and tourists in island cities such as Rethymno, Crete, and Valetta, Malta. Sustainable Mobility for Island Destinations contains contributions from highly experienced academics, engineers, and planners in the area of sustainable tourism, mobility services, and smart solutions design companies assisting: the change of the mind set in insular and tourism areas; the adoption of green mobility systems and services; and monitoring the environmental benefits to assist towards the Climate Change. It explores the challenges tourist islands face, such as the seasonal fluxes in transport usage, the pressures of tourism to provide aesthetic green spaces, and the space issues of being an island in relation to economic potential and infrastructure construction. The book suggests areas for future research, and implementation of innovative systems and policies. It will be of interest to academics, planners, decision makers, and environmentalists

Ontology-based personalisation of e-learning resources for disabled students

Students with disabilities are often expected to use e-learning systems to access learning materials but most systems do not provide appropriate adaptation or personalisation to meet their needs.The difficulties related to inadaptability of current learning environments can now be resolved using semantic web technologies such as web ontologies which have been successfully used to drive e-learning personalisation. Nevertheless, e-learning personalisation for students with disabilities has mainly targeted those with single disabilities such as dyslexia or visual impairment, often neglecting those with multiple disabilities due to the difficulty of designing for a combination of disabilities.This thesis argues that it is possible to personalise learning materials for learners with disabilities, including those with multiple disabilities. This is achieved by developing a model that allows the learning environment to present the student with learning materials in suitable formats while considering their disability and learning needs through an ontology-driven and disability-aware personalised e-learning system model (ONTODAPS). A disability ontology known as the Abilities and Disabilities Ontology for Online LEarning and Services (ADOOLES) is developed and used to drive this model. To test the above hypothesis, some case studies are employed to show how the model functions for various individuals with and without disabilities and then the implemented visual interface is experimentally evaluated by eighteen students with disabilities and heuristically by ten lecturers. The results are collected and statistically analysed.The results obtained confirm the above hypothesis and suggest that ONTODAPS can be effectively employed to personalise learning and to manage learning resources. The student participants found that ONTODAPS could aid their learning experience and all agreed that they would like to use this functionality in an existing learning environment. The results also suggest that ONTODAPS provides a platform where students with disabilities can have equivalent learning experience with their peers without disabilities. For the results to be generalised, this study could be extended through further experiments with more diverse groups of students with disabilities and across multiple educational institutions

Innovative Technologies and Services for Smart Cities

A smart city is a modern technology-driven urban area which uses sensing devices, information, and communication technology connected to the internet of things (IoTs) for the optimum and efficient utilization of infrastructures and services with the goal of improving the living conditions of citizens. Increasing populations, lower budgets, limited resources, and compatibility of the upgraded technologies are some of the few problems affecting the implementation of smart cities. Hence, there is continuous advancement regarding technologies for the implementation of smart cities. The aim of this Special Issue is to report on the design and development of integrated/smart sensors, a universal interfacing platform, along with the IoT framework, extending it to next-generation communication networks for monitoring parameters of interest with the goal of achieving smart cities. The proposed universal interfacing platform with the IoT framework will solve many challenging issues and significantly boost the growth of IoT-related applications, not just in the environmental monitoring domain but in the other key areas, such as smart home, assistive technology for the elderly care, smart city with smart waste management, smart E-metering, smart water supply, intelligent traffic control, smart grid, remote healthcare applications, etc., signifying benefits for all countries

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

Brexit and future of Europe – A new multilateral agenda? Egmont Commentary, 17 August 2016

With the European Union Global Strategy endorsed by the European Council, Balazs Ujvari, of Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations, assesses the long-term prospects for the EU’s multilateral action