The Shortest Path to Happiness: Recommending Beautiful, Quiet, and Happy Routes in the City

When providing directions to a place, web and mobile mapping services are all able to suggest the shortest route. The goal of this work is to automatically suggest routes that are not only short but also emotionally pleasant. To quantify the extent to which urban locations are pleasant, we use data from a crowd-sourcing platform that shows two street scenes in London (out of hundreds), and a user votes on which one looks more beautiful, quiet, and happy. We consider votes from more than 3.3K individuals and translate them into quantitative measures of location perceptions. We arrange those locations into a graph upon which we learn pleasant routes. Based on a quantitative validation, we find that, compared to the shortest routes, the recommended ones add just a few extra walking minutes and are indeed perceived to be more beautiful, quiet, and happy. To test the generality of our approach, we consider Flickr metadata of more than 3.7M pictures in London and 1.3M in Boston, compute proxies for the crowdsourced beauty dimension (the one for which we have collected the most votes), and evaluate those proxies with 30 participants in London and 54 in Boston. These participants have not only rated our recommendations but have also carefully motivated their choices, providing insights for future work.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, Proceedings of ACM Hypertext 201

Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2022

This open access book presents the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)’s 29th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER2022 conference, which will be held on January 11–14, 2022. The book provides an extensive overview of how information and communication technologies can be used to develop tourism and hospitality. It covers the latest research on various topics within the field, including augmented and virtual reality, website development, social media use, e-learning, big data, analytics, and recommendation systems. The readers will gain insights and ideas on how information and communication technologies can be used in tourism and hospitality. Academics working in the eTourism field, as well as students and practitioners, will find up-to-date information on the status of research

Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2022

This open access book presents the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)’s 29th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER2022 conference, which will be held on January 11–14, 2022. The book provides an extensive overview of how information and communication technologies can be used to develop tourism and hospitality. It covers the latest research on various topics within the field, including augmented and virtual reality, website development, social media use, e-learning, big data, analytics, and recommendation systems. The readers will gain insights and ideas on how information and communication technologies can be used in tourism and hospitality. Academics working in the eTourism field, as well as students and practitioners, will find up-to-date information on the status of research

Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2021

This open access book is the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)’s 28th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER21@yourplace virtual conference January 19–22, 2021. This book advances the current knowledge base of information and communication technologies and tourism in the areas of social media and sharing economy, technology including AI-driven technologies, research related to destination management and innovations, COVID-19 repercussions, and others. Readers will find a wealth of state-of-the-art insights, ideas, and case studies on how information and communication technologies can be applied in travel and tourism as we encounter new opportunities and challenges in an unpredictable world

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

THE EASTERN EUROPEAN MIGRANT OCCUPATIONAL EXPERIENCES IN THE UK: FALL, RECOVERY AND SUCCESS TRAJECTORIES

The primary aim is to explore the relation between international migration and career, and how these affect each other over time – the case of the Romanian migrants in the UK. The thesis presents two main research questions: Do the Romanian migrants in the UK achieve occupational success or are they more likely to remain stuck in the 3D (dirty, dangerous and demeaning) jobs? And, what are the plans of the Romanian migrants regarding the strategic use of their geographic mobility power for the future? The research assumes an interdisciplinary qualitative approach that allows the utilization of multiple theoretical paradigms and research methods with the purpose of understanding the migrant career dynamics. The research employs a life course methodological framework, in order to obtain rich data that permits the analysis of contextualism - linked lives, as all life spheres (e.g. education, family, and others) are interconnected. Methodologically, this thesis uses the grounded theory to answer the research questions in an exploratory manner. The research is a multi-sited investigation (London, Leicester and Cheltenham Spa), utilising multiple sampling methods – snowball, maximum variation and generic purposive techniques, and multiple analysis methods – thematic analysis and quasi-statistics. The data was collected via in-depth interviews alongside the life-grid instrument. When it comes to understanding and explaining the migrant career of Romanians in the UK, the discussion focuses on the trajectories during the lifetime of each participant in view of traditional versus new career types. Understanding the occupational trajectory as interlinked transitions of occupation, education, family and attachment to the UK, the migrant career has many advantages. In particular, it allows the integration of pre-migration occupational experiences, and concomitantly, the exploration of effects of the other life spheres including the international migration experiences in relation to career success (objective and subjective), as experienced and understood by the individuals themselves. In other words, this study exemplifies the Romanian during lifetime (overall) career patterns and conceptualises the migrant career occupational U-shape (mobility) in the UK as trajectories of fall, recovery and success. Hence, the main findings of the thesis are that (i) the Romanian migrants tend to resiliently pursue occupational success in the UK. Based on the retrospective longitudinal character of the data, the thesis demonstrates that the Romanian migrant occupational trajectories in the UK comply with the U-shaped pattern (fall and recovery), and that many succeed to achieve occupational success. Unlike previous studies, this thesis does not compare the Romanian migrants with the British natives, but measures recovery and success by taking, as benchmark, the best labour market position obtained as a native in Romania. Moreover, the thesis identifies the temporal character of the occupational U-shape trajectory of Romanian migrants in the UK. Following, (ii) most Romanian migrants willing to remain permanently in their ‘country of choice’ – the UK as occupational success and/or expansion in other life spheres are achieved. Expanding from occupation to the other life spheres, the thesis shows that aside from occupational success, many Romanian migrants in the UK are successful in other life spheres, especially by forming a family. Consequently, instead of intending to use their geographical 'migration power', they choose to remain permanently in the UK, particularly after/if they have a child

Innovation in smallholder farming in Africa: recent advances and recommendations: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Agricultural Innovation Systems in Africa (AISA)

In the wake of a series of recent international events and initiatives focusing on understanding and fostering innovation1, there is growing awareness and interest in applying and making sense of the Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) concepts and perspectives and what they offer for understanding and supporting innovation systems, processes and networks. This has particular relevance for African agriculture as it faces several challenges, such as increasing and intensifying food production in a sustainable way and nourishing its fast-growing population, adapting to the consequences of climate change, and finding its rightful place in an increasingly global and complex international scene. Several initiatives and programmes seeking answers to these questions jointly organised a series of events during a Week on Agricultural Innovation in Africa (WAIA) held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 25–31 May 2013, of which the international workshop on Agricultural Innovation Systems in Africa (AISA) on 29–31 May was a major part. Another key event during this week, was the Eastern African Farmer Innovation Fair (EAFIF) held on 28–29 May, which was linked to AISA