Assessing the Potential for Tourism Development

Increasing awareness of the relevance of natural resources for the practice of outdoor leisure and recreation purposes has contributed to the increasing attention upon the assessment and monitoring of the quality of sports spots. As such, evaluating the existing natural conditions and leisure-related infrastructures is crucial, helping public and private stakeholders in decision-making processes. This chapter aims at examining the conditions for surf tourism in the north of Portugal, enabling the monitoring and positioning as an international flagship destination for surf practitioners. This is done through a mixed-methods approach comprising the demand and supply perspectives and supported by an assessment tool developed to evaluate the conditions for the practice of surfing activities within a framework of sustainable tourism development. The relevance of assessing the potential and monitoring of the existing conditions for sport and outdoor activities, namely surf tourism, according to a defined set of attributes, is also discussed.

Bicycle Mobility Data: Current Use and Future Potential. An International Survey of Domain Professionals

Active mobility, especially cycling, is an essential building block for sustainable urban mobility. Public and private stakeholders are striving to improve conditions for cycling and subsequently increase its modal share. Data are regarded as key for different measures to become efficient and targeted. There is extensive evidence for an increasing amount of mobility data, availability of new data sources and potential usage scenarios for such data. However, little is known about the current use of these data in policy making, planning and related fields. To the best of our knowledge, it has not been investigated yet to which degree professionals in the broader field of cycling promotion benefit from an increasing amount of cycling-related data. Thus, we conducted a multi-lingual online survey among domain professionals and acquired data on their perspectives on current data availability, use and suitability as well as the potential they see for the use of cycling data in the future. In total, we received 325 complete responses from 32 countries, with the vast majority of 241 valid responses originating from Germany, Austria and Italy. Key findings are: 84% of domain professionals attribute high importance to data, and 89% state that they currently cannot or only partly solve their tasks with the data available to them. Results emphasize the need for making more and better suited data available to professionals in cycling-related positions, in both the private and public sector.

The Role of Blockchain in Improving the Processes and Workflows in Construction Projects

Construction is prone to disputes similar to other business dealings. Construction delays are the most common causes of disputes in construction projects. Most of the time, construction projects are delayed not only because of a lack of funding, but also because of disputes between the contractor and the client. Blockchain Technologies (BCT) have the potential to make the construction industry more efficient, inexpensive, or completely automated. In this paper, an extensive literature review is conducted to locate authoritative sources about the most common applications of blockchain technology in the construction industry. The study aims to identify the potential, benefits, challenges, and uses of blockchain in the construction industry. Furthermore, this paper explores the roles of BCTs in improving and enhancing the workflow efficiency of construction projects. In addition, this paper identifies the major causes of disputes and delays in the construction industry. These causes were used as the baseline for identifying the most relevant solutions provided by blockchain technologies to develop a matching model to find applicable solutions from the literature cases to resolve the identified causes of disputes and delays. The research findings indicated that the common cases of BCT including administrative purposes, smart contracts for transactions, permanent transaction records, and permanent ownership records contribute to solving the causes of disputes and delays in construction projects. The findings of this paper recommend that both public and private stakeholders in the construction sector adopt blockchain technologies and blockchain-based Building Information Models (BIMs) to improve construction workflows and processes.

Cultural Heritage Valorisation for Regional Development

Major tourism attractions are emerging as internationally acclaimed hubs of visits that both detract from visits to other cultural sites and the nonsustainability of these most-visited sites. As visitors are provided with authentic cultural heritage, the offer of specific experiences rooted in local history and the preserved cultural legacy of communities adds to a deeper touristic experience. The paper discusses the aims to improve policies that enable small and medium-sized towns and regions to valorise their cultural heritage through innovative assessments and knowledge sharing assisted by interaction with local public and private stakeholders.

Port choice in Brazil: a qualitative research related to in-depth interviews

The choice of port is one of the topics that most interest researchers. Port selection behaviour may vary depending on port user perspectives. Prior studies have attempted to determine user preferences for certain port choice factors, but there are only few studies in developing countries, such as Brazil, where there is a lack of studies on this topic. The objectives of this article are to analyse the port selection factors in Brazil for different port users, to discuss the implications for competitiveness among ports and to assist port service providers to formulate strategies. Identifying factors will help port service providers to develop strategies in the Brazilian market. The paper explores the case of the Southeast region port market in Brazil, based on data from the port sector and in-depth interviews with a representative selection of port users and specialists in the port sector. The results suggest that Brazilian Port Administrations need to adopt strategies aimed at increasing connections with the interior of Brazil, but they also need to adopt a highly market-based approach, communicating and synchronizing strategies with different public and private stakeholders.

Non-static framework for understanding adaptive designs: an ethical justification in paediatric trials

Many drugs used in paediatric medicine are off-label. There is a rising call for the use of adaptive clinical trial designs (ADs) in responding to the need for safe and effective drugs given their potential to offer efficiency and cost-effective benefits compared with traditional clinical trials. ADs have a strong appeal in paediatric clinical trials given the small number of available participants, limited understanding of age-related variability and the desire to limit exposure to futile or unsafe interventions. Although the ethical value of adaptive trials has increasingly come under scrutiny, there is a paucity of literature on the ethical dilemmas that may be associated with paediatric adaptive designs (PADs). This paper highlights some of these ethical concerns around safety, scientific/social value and caregiver/guardian comprehension of the trial design. Against this background, the paper develops a non-static conceptual lens for understanding PADs. It shows that ADs are epistemically open and reduce some of the knowledge-associated uncertainties inherent in clinical trials as well as fast-track the time to draw conclusions about the value of evaluated drugs/treatments. On this note, the authors argue that PADs are ethically justifiable given they (1) have multiple layers of safety, exposing enrolled children to lesser potential risks, (2) create social/scientific value generally and for paediatric populations in particular, (3) specifically foster the flourishing of paediatric populations and (4) can significantly improve paediatric trial efficiency when properly designed and implemented. However, because PADs are relatively new and their regulatory, ethical and logistical characteristics are yet to be clarified in some jurisdictions, the cooperation of various public and private stakeholders is required to ensure that the interests of children, their caregivers and parents/guardians are best served while exposing paediatric research subjects to the most minimal of risks when they are enrolled in paediatric trials that use ADs.

Impact of Climate Change on Wine Tourism: An Approach through Social Media Data

Wine tourism is one of the best opportunities for rural development, but because it is partially exposed to climatic conditions, it is a climate-vulnerable tourism activity. However, an understanding of the potential impacts of global climate change on this popular activity remains limited. This study proposes a new methodology that combines current daily gridded climate data from the E-OBS project with big spatiotemporal data from the Flickr photo-sharing platform through a generalized additive model This methodology was implemented to study the potential impacts on tourism flows due to climate change and to make predictions about the future using data from the CMIP5 project. We applied the methodology to 5 European wine tourism regions: Alsace (FR), Chianti (IT), La Rioja (SP), Langhe-Monferrato (IT), and Moselle (DE). Results show an increased probability of presence and increased deseasonalization of tourism in all study areas and an anticipation of peak presence from summer to spring in three of the five regions. We believe that these results can be useful for public and private stakeholders to adapt the offer of wine tourism services to changes in demand and to direct the organization of events such as festivals and thematic tours.

Gender Imbalance and Spatiotemporal Patterns of Contributions to Citizen Science Projects: The Case of Zooniverse

Citizen Science is research undertaken by professional scientists and members of the public collaboratively. Despite numerous benefits of citizen science for both the advancement of science and the community of the citizen scientists, there is still no comprehensive knowledge of patterns of contributions, and the demography of contributors to citizen science projects. In this paper we provide a first overview of spatiotemporal and gender distribution of citizen science workforce by analyzing 54 million classifications contributed by more than 340 thousand citizen science volunteers from 198 countries to one of the largest online citizen science platforms, Zooniverse. First we report on the uneven geographical distribution of the citizen scientist and model the variations among countries based on the socio-economic conditions as well as the level of research investment in each country. Analyzing the temporal features of contributions, we report on high “burstiness” of participation instances as well as the leisurely nature of participation suggested by the time of the day that the citizen scientists were the most active. Finally, we discuss the gender imbalance among online citizen scientists (about 30% female) and compare it with other collaborative projects as well as the gender distribution in more formal scientific activities. Online citizen science projects need further attention from outside of the academic community, and our findings can help attract the attention of public and private stakeholders, as well as to inform the design of the platforms and science policy making processes.

Off-site movement of quinclorac from rice fields

Highlights - Quinclorac persistence in paddy water is affected by its residues in entering waters. - Entering waters often contain quinclorac residues. - A water holding period of at least 10 days may limit the offsite movement of quinclorac residues from paddy fields. Abstract The off-site movement of quinclorac from rice paddies was studied in a district and field study during the 2014 and 2015 growing seasons. Quinclorac residues were monitored on in-field surface waters, and out-field water entering and leaving an irrigation district. The behavior of quinclorac residues in paddy water pointed out that the movement of herbicides from interconnected paddies is not negligible. This phenomenon was particularly evident in the days following the re-flooding of paddies after spraying. The water entering the uphill paddy fields have partially flushed quinclorac residues in the downhill paddy fields. Both the district and the field studies, showed the continuous presence of quinclorac residues in inlet waters. Even because of the continuous uploading of residues from inlet waters, traces of quinclorac in paddy water were detected up to 70 DAT. The presence of quinclorac in inlet water could be related to phenomena of drainage and drift during herbicide application in the paddies located upstream. The analysis carried out on waters leaving the district showed the presence of quinclorac residues in all the outlet floodgates, particularly from the end of May and late August. The results of this study suggest that appropriate management practices adopted at field scale may be required to lower the water contamination at irrigation district level. Considering that the highest losses of quinclorac occurred during the first 10-15 days after its application, to prevent these losses could be helpful avoiding water discharge from the treated fields for at least this period of time. In addition, a deep effort must be laid upon education and training of farmers on these environmental thematic throughout specific initiatives organized by public and private stakeholders.

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC: A CASE OF NIGERIA

Nigeria is one of the countries affected by the "COVID-19" outbreak. The severe economic obstacles caused by the pandemic are likely to exacerbate an already perceived brittle political fragility. A country of more than 206 million, with a fragile democracy, a weak health care system, and an inundated economy, vulnerable to the outrageous impact of COVID-19, politically and economically. Hence, the present study aims to scrutinize the pandemic's politico-economic implications on the Nigerian state. This study is qualitative research which employed secondary sources of data in scrutinizing Covid-19 potential impacts on Nigeria's politico-economic wellbeing, such as library information, documents from journal articles, books, newspapers, and reports, among others, to provide a comprehensive outlook of the phenomenon. The study posits that the Coronavirus continuously shapes and cripples the Nigerian economy, causing a substantial decline in GDP, political lurch, the outrageous effect on the health sector with a less coordinated response from the government, which makes the first and second wave more challenging for the people and government to bear. The study proposes an integrated approach between public and private stakeholders in the area of health and economy to deal with the deadly phenomenon, thereby curtailing its anticipated effects in the future. Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic, Political, Economic Impacts, Nigeria