Heuristic-based journey planner for mobility as a service (Maas)

© 2020 The Authors. Published by MDPI. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310140The continuing growth of urbanisation poses a real threat to the operation of transportation services in large metropolitan areas around the world. As a response, several initiatives that promote public transport and active travelling have emerged in the last few years. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is one such initiative with the main goal being the provision of a holistic urban mobility solution through a single interface, the MaaS operator. The successful implementation of MaaS requires the support of a technology platform for travellers to fully benefit from the offered transport services. A central component of such a platform is a journey planner with the ability to provide trip options that efficiently integrate the different modes included in a MaaS scheme. This paper presents a heuristic that implements a scenario-based journey planner for users of MaaS. The proposed heuristic provides routes composed of different modes including private cars, public transport, bike-sharing, car-sharing and ride-hailing. The methodological approach for the generation of journeys is explained and its implementation using a microservices architecture is presented. The implemented system was trialled in two European cities and the analysis of user satisfaction results reveal good overall performance.This research was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme grant number No 723176. And the APC was funded by the European Commission.Published versio

MultiModal route planning in mobility as a service

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by ACM in Proceedings 2019 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence Workshops (WI 2019 Companion) in October 2019, available online: https://doi.org/10.1145/3358695.3361843 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a new approach for multimodal transportation in smart cities which refers to the seamless integration of various forms of transport services accessible through one single digital platform. In a MaaS environment there can be a multitude of multi modal options to reach a destination which are derived from combinations of available transport services. Terefore, route planning functionalities in the MaaS era need to be able to generate multi-modal routes using constraints related to a user's modal allowances, service provision and limited user preferences (e.g. mode exclusions) and suggest to the traveller the routes that are relevant for specific trips as well as aligned to her/his preferences. In this paper, we describe an architecture for a MaaS multi-modal route planner which integrates i) a dynamic journey planner that aggregates unimodal routes from existing route planners (e.g. Google directions or Here routing), enriches them with innovative mobility services typically found in MaaS schemes, and converts them to multimodal options, while considering aspects of transport network supply and ii) a route recommender that filters and ranks the available routes in an optimal manner, while trying to satisfy travellers' preferences as well as requirements set by the MaaS operator (e.g. environmental friendliness of the routes or promotion of specific modes of transport).Published versio

The growth of Greek hotels before and during the crisis

This paper aims at determining the critical factors affecting the growth of the tourism sector in Greece, by using data for an extensive panel of Greek tourism enterprises for 2005–2016 period. As the Greek economy is trying to recover from a deep and prolonged recession, exploring growth issues in specific sectors could help identify those sectors which could act as drivers of growth for the Greek economy out of the recession. The tourism sector, which accounts for almost 25% of GDP in Greece (directly and indirectly), is an obvious candidate for contributing to this goal. The econometric results suggest that the recent crisis has resulted to a differentiation of the determinants of growth of Greek tourism firms. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Governing headquarters-subsidiaries relationship: An agency perspective

How multinational enterprises (MNEs) coordinate and control their geographically dispersed subunits is central to international management research (Kostova, Nell, & Hoenen, 2018). Our study adopts agency rationales to evaluate the effects of headquarters (HQs)–subsidiary convergence on the performance levels of the latter. Convergence within organizations relies to a large amount on controls that predicate a specific extent of alignment. In theory, the concept of alignment is seen as a valid proxy of agency intensity (Eisenhardt, 1989). Drawing on the supposition that MNEs are differentiated networks, where some subsidiaries continue to function the traditional competence-exploiting role while others are competence-creating and augment the advantages of their home-base (Björkman, Barner-Rasmussen, & Li, 2004), alignment challenges can be manifested in six dimensions that define their strategic posture, span the organizational context and underly competitive imperatives: 1) subsidiary strategy, 2) culture, 3) governance practices, 4) financial decisions, 5) human resources, and 6) environmental activity. Drawing on a sample of 72 MNE foreign operations and gathering 254 responses from top management team (TMT) members, our results indicate that strategic, cultural, governance, and HR alignment are important determinants of subsidiary performance. However, whereas strategic, cultural, and governance convergence between HQs and subsidiaries are positively related to increased performance levels, an ethnocentric approach towards HR practices seems to trigger welfare losses. © 2021 The Authors

Economic impact of road transportation infrastructure projects: the case of Egnatia Odos Motorway

Non-cyclical and high-leverage infrastructure projects, such as road transportation networks, have been considered as critical policy instruments to promote growth and social development. Yet, their growth-generating effect on the economic welfare of countries and regions has come under scrutiny in recent years: several studies have nuanced the implicit positive associations between investments in transportation and economic benefits. Building upon a set of traffic flow characteristics as potential correlates to the regional development indicator, this research focuses on the economic impacts of Egnatia Odos Motorway (EOM) on Greece's Northern region. To specify, by employing a large-scale longitudinal dataset which includes over 230 million entry records of various vehicle types along EOM, generated from toll collection systems between 2010 and 2019, we investigate the associations between traffic data and potential variations in regional GDP per capita annual growth rate. Our results suggest positive associations between regional economic development and the EOM operation and, more specifically, with passengers' transportation and inland freight. We conclude that transportation big data provide essential input for the appraisal of a road transport investment project, reveal the status of regional welfare, and may contain valuable information for spatial management and planning. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Do hedge and merger arbitrage funds actually hedge? A time-varying volatility spillover approach

We examine the interaction between funds implementing hedge and merger arbitrage strategies and a set of traditional assets comprising equities, bonds, gold, crude oil, currency, commodities and real estate, by applying a time-varying spillover approach for the period 1/1/2010-7/31/2020. Results indicate that the funds absorb the fewest shocks from equities, crude oil, gold and currency compared to commodities, bonds and real estate. Furthermore, we test the effective hedging ability of these funds by estimating hedge ratios and optimal portfolio weights. Taking a short position in the volatility of the funds provides impeccable hedging effectiveness for all asset classes, except currency. © 202

The cultural route of Hercules: Mapping the tourist’s perspective

This study explores the interest of potential visitors to participate in a proposed cultural route, themed after the Labors of Hercules in the Peloponnese. The main objectives of this study are to outline the demographic profile of potential visitors of the route and to explore appropriate means of organisation and promotion to ensure its success. To achieve these objectives, we conducted a field survey, distributing a questionnaire, from which 519 valid responses were collected. The survey results showed that there is strong interest for participation in the proposed route. In terms of demographics, most interest was expressed by highly educated women of all age groups. Survey participants expressed a strong desire for guided tours, and interest in modern services provided at waypoints. Finally, we concluded that the most feasible way to promote the route should not be limited to its cultural content, but should also emphasise the natural beauty and alternative tourism activities that it offers. The managerial implications of the present study could be useful for tourist operators, professionals and destination management organisations who may be interested in implementing this proposed route or any other cultural routes in the future. Copyright © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd

Harmony Model Suite: An Integrated Spatial and Multimodal Transport Planning Tool to Lead a Sustainable Transition to a New Mobility Era

The importance of integrated spatial and transport planning in regional and urban policy making stems from the fundamentally interdependent relationship of land-use, transport demand and transport supply. The adoption of an integrated approach would offer the possibility to local authorities to steer urban development towards simultaneously pursuing economic competitiveness, social cohesion, mobility and environmental sustainability. This is even more important in the current situation where the latest development in innovative mobility services and technology might significantly influence the mobility system. Against this background, the HARMONY project envisages developing a new generation of harmonised spatial and multimodal transport planning tools which comprehensively model the dynamics of spatial organisation and changing transport sector taking into consideration the dynamics that new services and technologies introduce. The ambition is to represent new forms of mobility for freight and people in order to enable metropolitan area authorities to lead the transition to a low carbon new mobility era in a sustainable manner. More specifically, the main goal of the HARMONY project is to develop a Model Suite (MS) as a multi-scale, software-agnostic, integrated activity-based model system, which enables end-users to link independent models and analyse a portfolio of regional and urban interventions for both passenger and freight mobility. These interventions would include policies and capital investments, land-use configurations, economic and sociodemographic assumptions, travel demand management strategies and new mobility service concepts. The main objective behind the model system’s architecture is to enable the evaluation of such interventions with regards to their impact on land-use, economic growth, transportation networks, energy, vehicular noise and emissions, while, at the same time, provide recommendations for Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) of the new mobility era. Depending on the examined scenario, each level of the HARMONY MS can be applied either integrated or in isolation, given adequate availability of exogenous data inputs. The HARMONY MS consists of the Strategic Level (Long-term), the Tactical Level (Mid-Term) and the Operational Level (Short-term). The Strategic Level is mainly composed of regional economic, demographic forecasting, land-use, spatial freight interaction and long-term mobility choice models. It operates on a long-term horizon (year-to-year) and is mainly responsible for generating i) disaggregate household and firm population and the locations for different types of activities, ii) aggregate commodity flows between employment sectors and iii) long-term mobility choices of individuals (agents). The Tactical Level is a fully agent-based passenger and freight demand model and it consists of two sub-models which model passenger and freight agents’ choices on a day-to-day level. The output from both sub-models is: i) disaggregated demand in the form of agents’ daily activity schedules (trip-chains), and ii) disaggregated demand in the form of truck tours and their corresponding trips. The Operational Level represents the transport supply and demand interactions at high granularity (e.g. second to second, minute to minute). It can be characterised as a multimodal network assignment model system that is responsible for loading the demand into different types of networks, while simultaneously capturing travellers’ route choices and dynamic schedule re-evaluation choices due to supply conditions. It also includes dedicated modules that emulate disruptive new mobility service operations and their interactions with agents (e.g. traveller, vehicles) of the system. HARMONY aims to apply the integrated model system (or part of it) in four metropolitan areas and evaluate the impact of different modelling exercises and spatial or transport planning scenarios: Oxfordshire (UK), Rotterdam (NL), Turin (IT) and Athens (GR). Application and evaluation of modelling use-cases will enable HARMONY to generate evidence-based recommendations with regards to Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans and indications of how new spatial and transport planning policies and investments can contribute to sustainable developments within the HARMONY metropolitan areas, and potentially, to other metropolitan areas on European scale. The HARMONY MS will be developed and applied from 2020 to 2022 in a project funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Framework Research Programme (www.harmony-h2020.eu). The consortium is led by the University College London and composed by Technische Universiteit Delft, University of the Aegean, University of Wolverhampton, TRT, MOBY, Aimsun, and Institute of Communication and Computer Systems as key partners of the scientific and theoretical activities. This paper is intended to provide a general overview of the project and a description of the conceptual architecture designed for the development of the integrated modelling system. Together with an overview on the project, the paper includes the model methodological outline and the illustration of the interaction among the model components