Strategies and Resources for Integrated Community Sustainability Planning in St. Paul’s, NL

Under the Federal Gas Tax Agreement, Canadian municipalities are required to complete an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP) by March, 2010. Integration and sustainability are two key concepts that have become the foundation of recent models for community planning. The purpose of such planning is to provide a broad, long‐term plan for a community that will help it maximize economic and social benefits, without depleting the environmental resources upon which community members depend. Like many coastal communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, St. Paul’s is currently facing many challenges to future sustainability. The town also has opportunities to develop linkages between its many assets in order to build a stronger community. This document discusses some of these challenges and opportunities in the context of integrated community sustainability planning. The document also includes strategies and resources that St. Paul’s, and other, similar coastal communities can use to develop linkages between community assets

Buyer-Seller Relationships in International Trade: Evidence from U.S. States' Exports and Business-Class Travel

International trade has become increasingly dependent on the transmission of complex information, often realized via face-to-face communication. This paper provides novel evidence for the importance of in-person business meetings in international trade. Interactions among trade partners entail a fixed cost of trade, but at the same time they generate relationship capital, which adds bilateral specific value to the traded products. Differences in the face-to-face communication intensity of traded goods, bilateral travel costs and foreign market size determine the optimal amount of interaction between trade partners. Using U.S. state level data on international business-class air travel as a measure of in-person business meetings, I find robust evidence that the demand for business-class air travel is directly related to volume and composition of exports in differentiated products. I also find that trade flows in R&D intensive manufactures and goods facing contractual frictions are most dependent on face-to-face meetings. The econometric identification exploits the cross-state variation in bilateral exports and business-class air travelers by foreign country and time period, circumventing any spurious correlation induced by cross-country differences driving aggregate travel and trade patterns.state exports; air travel; fixed export cost; face-to-face communication; relationship intensity; tacit knowledge

Customs, Immigration, and Rights: Constitutional Limits on Electronic Border Searches

The warrantless search of travelers’ electronic devices as they enter and exit the United States is rapidly increasing. While the Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, it applies to only two interests: promoting the duty regime and preventing contraband from entering the country; and ensuring that individuals are legally admitted. The government’s recent use of the exception goes substantially beyond these matters. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are using it to search electronic devices, and at times the cloud, for evidence of any criminal activity, bypassing the warrant requirement altogether. Searches of these devices implicate privacy concerns well beyond those of the home, which has long been protected even for customs and immigration purposes. This Essay traces the evolution of the border exception, noting the effect of recent Supreme Court decisions, to argue that CBP and ICE are operating outside constitutional constraints. The Essay considers two objections grounded in the legitimate interests of CBP and ICE. It responds, first, that inspection of digital devices differs from the examination of a traveler’s purse or luggage: the level of intrusion and the amount of information obtained changes the quality of the search, triggering Fourth Amendment protections. Second, as an immigration matter, as soon as citizens are identified, absent probable cause, the government does not have the constitutional authority to search their devices at all. Foreigners lacking a substantial connection to the country, however, do not enjoy the same Fourth Amendment protections. It concludes by observing that because of the substance and complexity of the issue, Congress has an important role to play in determining what types of searches are justified

Perception of Travel Agents Towards Amadeus And Galileo Global Distribution System

This study was conducted to assess the perception of travel agents towards Amadeus and Galileo Global Distribution System in some selected travel agencies in Lagos Island, Lagos state. Two hundred and forty-three (243) questionnaires were administered while two hundred and seven (207) were retrieved. The first hypothesis was tested using Pearson chi-square value which was less than 0.05 (p=0.000) thereby rejecting the null hypothesis which implies that there is a significant relationship between using Global Distribution System and Travel agencies. Result also reveals that the Pearson chi-square value of the second hypothesis is less than 0.05 (p=0.000) thereby rejecting the null hypothesis which implies that Global Distribution System contributes to the development of travel agencies. Therefore, Global Distribution System helps in the development of travel agencies. Other findings are; Amadeus Global Distribution System is used more than its counterpart Galileo Global Distribution System. Also, Global Distribution System has helped broaden staff knowledge towards reservation and hotel bookings. Based on these findings, it is hereby concluded that Global Distribution System Amadeus is quite prevalent and more used among the agents working with airlines; Global Distribution System Amadeus assumes the foremost position in relation to Galileo Global Distribution Systems, primarily due to the evolution of software that is tailored specially to meet the desires of individual users, allowing the availability and exchange of quality information to enormous number of users, thus linking tourism related companies in the global networks.

Chapter 13 - Sharing strategies: carsharing, shared micromobility (bikesharing and scooter sharing), transportation network companies, microtransit, and other innovative mobility modes

Shared mobility—the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle, or other mode—is an innovative transportation strategy that enables users to gain short-term access to transportation modes on an “as-needed” basis. It includes various forms of carsharing, bikesharing, scooter sharing, ridesharing (carpooling and vanpooling), transportation network companies (TNCs), and microtransit. Included in this ecosystem are smartphone “apps” that aggregate and optimize these mobility options, as well as “courier network services” that provide last mile package and food delivery. This chapter describes different models that have emerged in shared mobility and reviews research that has quantified the environmental, social, and transportation-related impacts of these services

Passenger ride quality determined from commercial airline flights

The University of Virginia ride-quality research program is reviewed. Data from two flight programs, involving seven types of aircraft, are considered in detail. An apparatus for measuring physical variations in the flight environment and recording the subjective reactions of test subjects is described. Models are presented for predicting the comfort response of test subjects from the physical data, and predicting the overall comfort reaction of test subjects from their moment by moment responses. The correspondence of mean passenger comfort judgments and test subject response is shown. Finally, the models of comfort response based on data from the 5-point and 7-point comfort scales are shown to correspond

New Variations of the Online <em>k</em>-Canadian Traveler Problem: Uncertain Costs at Known Locations

In this chapter, we study new variations of the online k-Canadian Traveler Problem (k-CTP) in which there is an input graph with a given source node O and a destination node D. For a specified set consisting of k edges, the edge costs are unknown (we call these uncertain edges). Costs of the remaining edges are known and given. The objective is to find an online strategy such that the traveling agent finds a route from O to D with minimum total travel cost. The agent learns the cost of an uncertain edge, when she arrives at one of its end-nodes and decides on her travel path based on the discovered cost. We call this problem the online k-Canadian Traveler Problem with uncertain edges. We analyze both the single-agent and the multi-agent versions of the problem. We propose a tight lower bound on the competitive ratio of deterministic online strategies together with an optimal online strategy for the single-agent version. We consider the multi-agent version with two different objectives. We suggest lower bounds on the competitive ratio of deterministic online strategies to these two problems