Distinguishing different types of city tourists through clustering and recursive logit models applied to Wi-Fi data

We discuss the possibilities to distinguish different types of tourists based on Wi-Fi sensor data. The data are obtained from 20 sensors employed in Higashiyama, Kyoto, which is an area highly frequented by tourists. We describe tourist-tours as a sequence of sensors at which they are observed. Based on these records a clustering approach is chosen where we select as clustering variables, among others, the degree of detours and the length of time they are observed. We find that we can distinguish groups of tourists that are visiting a number of sightseeing spots in a short time from others who walk through the area more leisurely and are likely enjoying souvenir shops and restaurants. For the main tourist clusters than a Recursive Logit approach is applied to model their route-choice based on path length and attractions en-route. We find that the estimated parameters reflect these group characteristics

Comparative Analysis of Proximal and Distal Determinants for the Acceptance of Coercive Charging Policies in the UK and Japan

Coercive policies, such as road pricing or environmental taxation, are policies of an authority that charges or restricts its subjects in order to protect or restore common goods. Studies have shown it is important to understand the acceptability of such policies to the general public to guarantee long-term success. Our analysis, based on a limited survey of British and Japanese students, investigates well-established psychological factors that determine acceptability of road pricing directly or indirectly, such as perceived effectiveness, fairness, or problem awareness, as well as the role of a general trust in the government and a belief in "absolute values

Restrictive and stimulative impacts of COVID-19 policies on activity trends: A case study of Kyoto

This paper employs regression with ARIMA errors (RegARIMA) to quantify the impacts of multiple non-pharmaceutical interventions, daily new cases, seasonal and calendar effects, and other factors on activity trends across the timeline of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. The discussion focuses on two controversial policy sets imposed by the Japanese government that aim to contain the pandemic and to stimulate the recovery of the economy. The containing effect was achieved by stay-at-home requests and declaring a “State of Emergency” in the combat against the first waves of infectious cases. After observing reduced cases, Go-to-travel and Go-to-eat campaigns were launched in July 2020 to encourage recreational travel and to revive the economy. To better understand the impact of the policies we utilize “Google trends” which measure how much these policies are looked up online. We suggest this reflects how much they are part of the public discussion. A case study is conducted in Kyoto, a city famous for tourism. The proposed RegARIMA model is compared with linear regression and time series models. The outperformances in measuring the magnitude of intervention impacts and forecasting the future trends are confirmed by using a total of twelve activity and mobility indices as the dependent variable. Nine indices are released by Google and Apple and three are obtained from local Wi-Fi packet sensors. The effect of the State of Emergency declaration is found to erode at the second implementation, and the second stage of the Go-to-travel campaign successfully stimulated travel demand in the autumn sighting season of 2020

Joint car ownership and car type preference model considering engagement in online activities and environmental concern

We investigate young people's attitudes to own a car. Our dependent variable is the desire to purchase any type of car as well as specific car types, such as small cars, sports cars or hybrid cars. We focus on Japanese aged 18 to 25 and obtain a valid sample of 1125 from Tokyo residents, Kyoto residents as well as people living in rural areas of Japan. As expected we find significant differences according to the city or rural living context. We control further for a number of attitudinal aspects that have been found significant in previous studies. We find that the perceived fun one gains from owning a car is an important factor and that more expensive and prestigious cars appear to be still desired. Our main focus and contribution is the inclusion of car's “usefulness to avoid pollution” and “online lifestyle”. We find that those spending more time alone with online activities, have less desire to purchase cars. We discuss that there might be cyclic relationships which call for careful discussion on the implication of car ownership reduction in rural Explanatory variables areas. Furthermore, there is some weak evidence for an “environmental dilemma” where pollution in fact encourages more car usage in order to avoid this pollution

Simulation of tourists' wayfinding during evacuation based on experiments in Kyoto

24th EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting, EWGT 2021, 8-10 September 2021, Aveiro, PortugalTourists are often more vulnerable than residents in sudden disaster situations due to lack of knowledge regarding evacuation routes and safe areas. To establish protocols and the schemes for tourist evacuation to safe areas, it is necessary to gather their likely behavior during an evacuation. Since there are few actual data available we conducted a VR (Virtual Reality) experiment assuming a sudden disaster situation and estimated tourists’ route choice based on the experiment. In the experiment pictures of intersection in the touristic Higashiyama area of Kyoto, Japan, where shown to participants and they could choose the direction they want to proceed until reaching an open space or designated shelter. As a result, we could quantify the impact of road width and, to some degree, network structure. The results reveal the tendency to select wide roads and to proceed straight. If the participants were put under time pressure these tendencies are intensified. Utilizing these results we constructed an evacuation simulation. We estimated the distribution and amount of tourists using data obtained from a mobile phone service provider. We conducted the simulation using VisWalk with various guidance situations and compared those results. The results illustrate potential capacity bottlenecks of designated shelter locations and the importance to provide route guidance and certain points in the network

Activities of National Hellenic Documentation Centre and the National Network of Scientific and Technological Libraries

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενοThe mission of National (Hellenic) Documentation Centre (NDC)is to ensure the flow of the scientific and technological information to the Hellenic scientific community. This is achieved by establishing online access to 17 international hosts and 1.300 databases, acting as the major information intermediary in the country offering bibliographic references to 10.000 scientst per year, producing 8 national databases and hosting 40 databases produced by other national or international organisations. Concerning libraries NDC supports them by developing and disseminating ABEKT, the most popular library automation software in the country numbering more than 700 copies installed, developing, in close collaboration with 206 libraries, the Union Catalogue of Periodicals including 22.790 unique journal titles, creating and coordinating the National Network of Hellenic Scientific Libraries with 107 libraries supporting interlibrary loan through the online document ordering system provided by the host computer of NDC, developing its own digital library having access to more than 230 electronic journals via internet and about 1.000 installed locally, organising seminars, workshops and information days focusing on the electronic information services and technologies

Link-Based Route Choice Considering Risk Aversion, Disappointment, and Regret

In networks with uncertain link travel times route guidance information should consider traveller preferences (1). Risk-averse travellers prefer safer options but might feel unsatisfied if it turns out that their decision has been based on wrong expectations. This paper therefore proposes a new approach to take regret, disappointment and risk aversion into consideration in route navigation. Limited information is assumed: The router knows minimum and maximum travel times of links but not the probability distribution of link travel times. Routes using only potentially optimal links are chosen by weighting the travel times scenarios expected on a given path and taking into account the cost of alternative options. Two approaches are explored, referred to as global and local search. The local search can be implemented as a fast method avoiding path search by guiding travellers link by link. As a drawback local search potentially can lead to cyclic paths. Possibilities to overcome the cyclic path issue and boundary properties of both approaches are discussed. Monte Carlo simulation on a US network suggests that the two approaches can provide good solutions to the problem of route choice under severe lack of information. The local search seems to be particularly promising

A Fuzzy Logic-Based Approach for Estimation of Dwelling Times of Panama Metro Stations

Passenger flow modeling and station dwelling time estimation are significant elements for railway mass transit planning, but system operators usually have limited information to model the passenger flow. In this paper, an artificial-intelligence technique known as fuzzy logic is applied for the estimation of the elements of the origin-destination matrix and the dwelling time of stations in a railway transport system. The fuzzy inference engine used in the algorithm is based in the principle of maximum entropy. The approach considers passengers’ preferences to assign a level of congestion in each car of the train in function of the properties of the station platforms. This approach is implemented to estimate the passenger flow and dwelling times of the recently opened Line 1 of the Panama Metro. The dwelling times obtained from the simulation are compared to real measurements to validate the approach.The authors of this paper want to express their gratitude to the National Secretary of Science and Technology (SENACYT) of the Government of the Republic of Panama for funding this study through the R & D project (MDEPRB09-001). Additionally, they want to thank the support received from Technological University of Panama (UTP), the University of Granada, the Fundación Carolina and the Secretaría del Metro de Panamá (SMP)

Designing robust schedule coordination scheme for transit networks with safety control margins

We propose a robust schedule coordination scheme which combines timetable planning with a semi-flexible departure delayed control strategy in case of disruptions. The flexibility is provided by allowing holding for the late incoming bus within a safety control margin (SCM). In this way, the stochastic travel time is addressed by the integration of real-time control and slacks at the planning phase. The schedule coordination problem then jointly optimises the planning headways and slack times in the timetable subject to SCM. Analytical formulations of cost functions are derived for three types of operating modes: uncoordinated operation, departure punctual control and departure delayed control. The problem is formulated as a stochastic mixed integer programming model and solved by a branch-and-bound algorithm. Numerical results provide an insight into the interaction between SCM and slack times, and demonstrate that the proposed model leads to cost saving and higher efficiency when SCM is considered. Compared to the conventional operating modes, the proposed method also presents advantages in transfer reliability and robustness to delay and demand variation