Search Results (7)

As climate change concerns, urban congestion, and environmental degradation intensify, cities prioritise cycling as a sustainable transport option to reduce CO₂ emissions and improve quality of life. However, rampant bicycle theft and poor security infrastructure often deter daily commuters and tourists from cycling. This study explores how advanced security measures can bolster sustainable urban mobility and tourism by addressing these challenges. A mixed-methods approach is utilised, incorporating primary survey data from Slovenia and secondary data on bicycle sales, imports and thefts from 2015 to 2024. Findings indicate that access to secure parking substantially enhances users’ sense of safety when commuting by bike. Regression analysis shows that for every 1000 additional bicycles sold, approximately 280 more thefts occur—equivalent to a 0.28 rise in reported thefts—highlighting a systemic vulnerability associated with sustainability-oriented behaviour. To bridge this gap, the study advocates for an innovative security framework that combines blockchain technology and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) with encrypted Quick Response (QR) codes. Each bicycle would receive a tamper-proof QR code connected to a blockchain-verified NFT documenting ownership and usage data. This system facilitates real-time authentication, enhances traceability, deters theft, and builds trust in cycling as a dependable transport alternative. The proposed solution merges sustainable transport, digital identity, and urban security, presenting a scalable model for individual users and shared mobility systems. Full article

Tourism plays an important role in the economic and social development of many countries and regions. Tourists buy food, such as canned food, alcohol, and spices, which increases the value of a trip, fulfilling a cultural, sentimental, educational, and marketing role whilst documenting the trip, or they become gifts for family and friends. However, spices may not be of the appropriate quality or may even be harmful to health due to contamination or adulteration. Therefore, the aim of the paper was to present spices as culinary souvenirs and to indicate some risks that may arise from their consumption. To date, only few such studies have been published in this area. A literature review was conducted and data from Eurostat, Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) and Web of Science were used. The most serious hazards in spices are pathogens, pesticides, and mycotoxins in products from Asia. Adequate awareness needs to be built among tourists and tour operators about where to buy spices that are risk-free and not adulterated. It will contribute to the development of sustainable food tourism. Further research may look at specific types of spices and where they are purchased highlighting the issue of authenticity and traceability. Full article

Regulation (EU) 2016/429 introduces comprehensive guidelines for managing transmissible animal diseases, including zoonoses. The subsequent Commission Implementing Regulation 2018/1882 categorizes these diseases into five groups, each with specific responses, ranging from mandatory eradication to optional eradication or surveillance. Key regulatory priorities include enhanced animal traceability, biosecurity, wildlife pathogen control, sustainable farming practices, and minimizing the impact of diseases on public health, animal health, and the environment. These objectives align with the European Green Deal, the Farm to Fork Strategy, the One Health approach, and the ongoing revaluation of European Inner Areas. They, including the Molise Region in Italy, are often remote, face service accessibility challenges, and suffer from depopulation and farm abandonment. Nonetheless, they hold significant potential for agropastoral and agri-food activities that can support tourism, the commercialization of local products, and recreational pursuits. Implementing optional programmes for animal diseases and zoonoses not subject to mandatory eradication could help the farms of these areas to mitigate productivity losses due to diseases like Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis and Paratuberculosis. The latter is a suspected zoonosis potentially linked to Crohn’s disease in humans. Optional programmes could enhance economic returns, counteract depopulation, support animal welfare and pasture conservation, and reduce the risk of exposure to zoonotic diseases for residents and tourists attracted by the ecological appeal of these areas. Full article

The deployment of Blockchain technology in the tourism industry is already becoming a reality with the gradual emergence of innovative business models. At its core is the promise of improving the efficiency of the tourism service value chain and enhancing the quality of the service provided to the end customer. This paper analyses research trends focused on using Blockchain technology in tourism. The aim is to determine how this technology impacts the tourism sector and its sustainability. A systematic review, descriptive bibliometric analysis, and network analysis based on co-authorship, co-citation, and keyword analysis criteria, among others, have been used. The results reveal that the subject matter analysed is generating a growing trend in academic research in the fields of sustainable management and supply chain efficiency. The activities in the tourism sector that are incorporating this technology to a greater extent are those related to the areas of marketing, logistics, and smart business models, according to the data extracted from the analysis. This technology already enables the application of solutions that predict and promote tourist behaviour based on sustainable behaviour and consumption habits, generating value for the different stakeholders. Full article

Tourist traceability is the analysis of the set of actions, procedures, and technical measures that allows us to identify and record the space–time causality of the tourist’s touring, from the beginning to the end of the chain of the tourist product. Besides, the traceability of tourists has implications for infrastructure, transport, products, marketing, the commercial viability of the industry, and the management of the destination’s social, environmental, and cultural impact. To this end, a tourist traceability system requires a knowledge base for processing elements, such as functions, objects, events, and logical connectors among them. A knowledge base provides us with information on the preparation, planning, and implementation or operation stages. In this regard, unifying tourism terminology in a traceability system is a challenge because we need a central repository that promotes standards for tourists and suppliers in forming a formal body of knowledge representation. Some studies are related to the construction of ontologies in tourism, but none focus on tourist traceability systems. For the above, we propose OntoTouTra, an ontology that uses formal specifications to represent knowledge of tourist traceability systems. This paper outlines the development of the OntoTouTra ontology and how we gathered and processed data from ubiquitous computing using Big Data analysis techniques. Full article

Urban rail transit passenger flow forecasting is an important basis for station design, passenger flow organization, and train operation plan optimization. In this work, we combined the artificial fish swarm and improved particle swarm optimization (AFSA-PSO) algorithms. Taking the Window of the World station of the Shenzhen Metro Line 1 as an example, subway passenger flow prediction research was carried out. The AFSA-PSO algorithm successfully preserved the fast convergence and strong traceability of the original algorithm through particle self-adjustment and dynamic weights, and it effectively overcame its shortcomings, such as the tendency to fall into local optimum and lower convergence speed. In addition to accurately predicting normal passenger flow, the algorithm can also effectively identify and predict the large-scale tourist attractions passenger flow as it has strong applicability and robustness. Compared with single PSO or AFSA algorithms, the new algorithm has better prediction effects, such as faster convergence, lower average absolute percentage error, and a higher correlation coefficient with real values. Full article

The tracking of tourist movements is an essential aspect in the management of sustainable tourist destinations. The current information and communication technologies provide innovative ways of collecting data on tourist movements, but it is still necessary to evaluate tools and methods of study for this challenge. At this point, mobile technologies are the best candidate for this task. Given the relevance of the topic, this paper proposes a mapping science analysis of publications on “movement of tourists” and “traceability.” It has been carried out in the two main sources WOS and SCOPUS. The term “traceability” is brought from industry and technology areas to be applied to the tourist movement/mobility tracking and management. The methodological scheme is based on a selection of search criteria with combinations of terms. The sources of specialized information in applied social sciences and technology were then selected. From there, the searches have been executed for their subsequent analysis in three stages—(I) relevance analysis filtering the results to obtain the most pertinent; (II) analysis of articles with similarity thematic, authors, journals or citations; (III) analysis of selected papers as input for the mapping analysis using Citespace. The automatic naming of clusters under the selected processing confirms that the analysis of movements is a valid scientific trend but research-oriented from the perspective of traceability is non-existent, so this approach is novel and complementary to existing ones and a potential contribution to knowledge about tourist movements. Finally, a set of methodological considerations and a classification of information capture tools are proposed. In this classification, mobile technology is the best option to enable tourist movement analysis. Full article