Towards Smarter Management of Overtourism in Historic Centres Through Visitor-Flow Monitoring

Historic centres are highly regarded destinations for watching and even participating in diverse and unique forms of cultural expression. Cultural tourism, according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), is an important and consolidated tourism sector and its strong growth is expected to continue over the coming years. Tourism, the much dreamt of redeemer for historic centres, also represents one of the main threats to heritage conservation: visitors can dynamize an economy, yet the rapid growth of tourism often has negative effects on both built heritage and the lives of local inhabitants. Knowledge of occupancy levels and flows of visiting tourists is key to the efficient management of tourism; the new technologies—the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and geographic information systems (GIS)—when combined in interconnected networks represent a qualitative leap forward, compared to traditional methods of estimating locations and flows. A methodology is described in this paper for the management of tourism flows that is designed to promote sustainable tourism in historic centres through intelligent support mechanisms. As part of the Smart Heritage City (SHCITY) project, a collection system for visitors is developed. Following data collection via monitoring equipment, the analysis of a set of quantitative indicators yields information that can then be used to analyse visitor flows; enabling city managers to make management decisions when the tourism-carrying capacity is exceeded and gives way to overtourism.Funded by the Interreg Sudoe Programme of the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF

Taste Visualization Technique for Online Food Shopping Malls: Development and Application

The main goal of this study is to visualize tastes of foods and agro-products to reduce the uncertainty of purchasing of them in online shopping malls. To accomplish the goal, we select two Korean traditional foods; Kimchi and Gochujang, develop the criteria for visualization of their tastes, choose about ten products for each food that are on sale in the online shopping malls, make visualization tables and apply them to the real shopping mall. And then, we contrast the customer satisfaction, purchasing pattern, and sales of both before and after applying the taste visualization tables

A practical approach to product design for future worlds using scenario-development

The focus of consumer product design is shifting from primarily offering functionality, towards\ud experience and emotion driven product characteristics [1]. At the same time the functioning of\ud products is more and more defined in its social context. Product designers can play a major role in\ud developing our future social context, as long as they are aware of the responsibility towards users,\ud society and environment. In the master ‘Design & Styling’ of the Industrial Design Engineering\ud program of the University of Twente, we created a course “Create the Future”, addressing both these\ud future- and society oriented aspects of design. In this paper we describe the course structure and the\ud associated teaching methods, give examples of student results and discuss the points of interest and\ud application possibilities. In the 2008 edition the students explored the future of food. First the students\ud created a future context by investigating, building and visualizing multiple scenarios. Subsequently\ud they designed a future product concept within these scenario contexts. It showed that the structure of\ud this course was particularly suitable for designing products for the not so near future, i.e. 15-20 years\ud ahead. Especially scenario development proved to be a good instrument for the students to be able to\ud create a tangible context for designing future products and services

Evidence in Practice – A Pilot Study Leveraging Companion Animal and Equine Health Data from Primary Care Veterinary Clinics in New Zealand

Veterinary practitioners have extensive knowledge of animal health from their day-to-day observations of clinical patients. There have been several recent initiatives to capture these data from electronic medical records for use in national surveillance systems and clinical research. In response, an approach to surveillance has been evolving that leverages existing computerized veterinary practice management systems to capture animal health data recorded by veterinarians. Work in the United Kingdom within the VetCompass program utilizes routinely recorded clinical data with the addition of further standardized fields. The current study describes a prototype system that was developed based on this approach. In a 4-week pilot study in New Zealand, clinical data on presentation reasons and diagnoses from a total of 344 patient consults were extracted from two veterinary clinics into a dedicated database and analyzed at the population level. New Zealand companion animal and equine veterinary practitioners were engaged to test the feasibility of this national practice-based health information and data system. Strategies to ensure continued engagement and submission of quality data by participating veterinarians were identified, as were important considerations for transitioning the pilot program to a sustainable large-scale and multi-species surveillance system that has the capacity to securely manage big data. The results further emphasized the need for a high degree of usability and smart interface design to make such a system work effectively in practice. The geospatial integration of data from multiple clinical practices into a common operating picture can be used to establish the baseline incidence of disease in New Zealand companion animal and equine populations, detect unusual trends that may indicate an emerging disease threat or welfare issue, improve the management of endemic and exotic infectious diseases, and support research activities. This pilot project is an important step toward developing a national surveillance system for companion animals and equines that moves beyond emerging infectious disease detection to provide important animal health information that can be used by a wide range of stakeholder groups, including participating veterinary practices

Seafloor characterization using airborne hyperspectral co-registration procedures independent from attitude and positioning sensors

The advance of remote-sensing technology and data-storage capabilities has progressed in the last decade to commercial multi-sensor data collection. There is a constant need to characterize, quantify and monitor the coastal areas for habitat research and coastal management. In this paper, we present work on seafloor characterization that uses hyperspectral imagery (HSI). The HSI data allows the operator to extend seafloor characterization from multibeam backscatter towards land and thus creates a seamless ocean-to-land characterization of the littoral zone