Identifying tourists and analyzing spatial patterns of their destinations from location-based social media data

Reliable travel behavior data is a prerequisite for transportation planning process. In large tourism dependent cities, tourists are the most dynamic population group whose size and travel choices remain unknown to planners. Traditional travel surveys generally observe resident travel behavior and rarely target tourists. Ubiquitous uses of social media platforms in smartphones have created a tremendous opportunity to gather digital traces of tourists at a large scale. In this paper, we present a framework on how to use location-based data from social media to gather and analyze travel behavior of tourists. We have collected data of about 67,000 users from Twitter using its search interface for Florida. We first propose several filtering steps to create a reliable sample from the collected Twitter data. An ensemble classification technique is proposed to classify tourists and residents from user coordinates. The accuracy of the proposed classifier has been compared against the state-of-the-art classification methods. Finally, different clustering methods have been used to find the spatial patterns of destination choices of tourists. Promising results have been found from the output clusters as they reveal most popular tourist spots as well as some of the emerging tourist attractions in Florida. Performance of the proposed clustering techniques has been assessed using internal clustering validation indices. We have analyzed temporal patterns of tourist and resident activities to validate the classification of the users in two separate groups of tourists and residents. Proposed filtering, identification, and clustering techniques will be significantly useful for building individual-level tourist travel demand models from social media data.     

Optimal concession contracts for landlord port authorities with different pursuing goals

This paper investigates how landlord port authorities should offer concession contracts to their terminal operators under two different goals, by building a two-stage game for each goal. If maximizing the weighted sum of fee revenues and throughout benefits is port authorities’ goal, then the optimal concession contract can be any of the two-part tariff, the unit-fee, and the fixed-fee contracts. Accordingly, our special cases include previous works assuming that port authorities maximize either fee revenues or throughput benefits. By contrast, if maximizing the social welfare is the goal, then we find that subsidizing terminal operators, instead of charging them, is port authorities’ best choice. This result is not yet discovered in the literature.     

长江南京以下深水航道二期工程碍航水道演变特性及航道治理思路

长江南京以下12.5 m深水航道二期工程建设是落实国家"一带一路"战略、打造长江综合立体交通走廊的重大举措。针对二期工程河段4个水道的碍航情况,在分析上游来流来沙特性、各水道分流分沙特性及演化过程的基础上,对碍航特性、河床演变特性及趋势进行分析,提出各水道的整治时机、关键部位和治理思路。成果为航道整治工程设计与建设提供技术支撑,也为感潮河段航道整治积累经验。     

Establishment of Community Managed Fisheries’ Closures in Kenya: Early Evolution of the Tengefu Movement

Community-based management (CBM) could be an essential tool to prevent the depletion of marine resources in the Western Indian Ocean region. In Kenya, political pressure to strengthen local governance, has led to adoption of CBM as a way of reducing over-exploitation and managing the competing uses and impacts on the marine environment. Several communities in Kenya have embraced CBM and have set aside or closed previously fished areas to enhance recovery of fisheries and biodiversity. These community fisheries closures (locally called tengefu), despite being degraded, may recover to finfish abundances and biodiversity levels similar to established MPAs or above thresholds for maintaining some ecological services. Communities see their direct involvement and control of these tengefu as more likely to result in benefits flowing directly to them. Community closures are also important for articulating and resolving community values and strengthening their management capacity. Here, we describe the evolution of the tengefu movement in Kenya and combine information from focus group discussions, interviews, underwater surveys and boundary marking to evaluate the current status, opportunities and challenges facing these tengefu. We show that in some cases community closures suffer from slow and incomplete national and local legislative processes, challenges to compliance, and weak management.     

Socially optimal electric driving range of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

This study determines the optimal electric driving range of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) that minimizes the daily cost borne by the society when using this technology. An optimization framework is developed and applied to datasets representing the US market. Results indicate that the optimal range is 16 miles with an average social cost of $3.19 per day when exclusively charging at home, compared to $3.27 per day of driving a conventional vehicle. The optimal range is found to be sensitive to the cost of battery packs and the price of gasoline. When workplace charging is available, the optimal electric driving range surprisingly increases from 16 to 22 miles, as larger batteries would allow drivers to better take advantage of the charging opportunities to achieve longer electrified travel distances, yielding social cost savings. If workplace charging is available, the optimal density is to deploy a workplace charger for every 3.66 vehicles. Moreover, the diversification of the battery size, i.e., introducing a pair and triple of electric driving ranges to the market, could further decrease the average societal cost per PHEV by 7.45% and 11.5% respectively.     

Shaping the Coast with Permits: Making the State Regulatory Permitting Process Transparent with Text Mining

This paper examines the California Coastal Commission's permitting process. Using several text mining techniques, including web scraping, information extraction, and supervised classification, I demonstrate how to retrieve empirical data from unstructured texts, namely public meeting agendas and staff reports. Contrary to the concern that the Commission routinely delays or rejects permitting requests, the data reveal that outright rejection of permit applications is rare. On average, eight of ten applications were approved. Single-family homes and commercial development projects were approved about 80% of the time; the rates were about 70% for seawalls and retaining walls, and 60% for land-use changes. Most applications were processed swiftly, with a median application length of 3 months. The agency's influence comes primarily from negotiating each application. Qualitative study of 50 cases pertaining to single-family home construction reveals that the agency adopts a “managed development” approach, that is, allowing development but scrupulously managing various aspects of development. These case studies illustrate how the agency interprets the broad, abstract state laws and translates the mandates into enforceable actions as permitting conditions. In areas where the state mandates conflict, particularly over development in receding shorelines, the agency has the largest leverage in creating and implementing its preferred policies. The text mining techniques demonstrated in this paper can be applied to study any governmental agency. These techniques help to extract information from a massive volume of papers and organize them into a database for analyses. The empirical data extracted from texts can significantly increase bureaucratic transparency.     

汉江河口段河床演变及碍航特性分析

汉江河口段属典型的"两堤一江"河段,河道微弯,河槽单一。根据《湖北省内河航运发展规划(修编)》,本河段将在十三五期间将航道等级提升到Ⅱ级。根据河道地形资料,从河道平面、深泓纵剖面、深槽变化等方面着手,对该河段的河床演变规律、影响因素及碍航特性进行研究,并针对碍航浅区段提出相应的治理思路,为该河段的航道治理提供依据。     

大城市中小学周边地区交通拥堵问题分析与解决策略

交通拥堵已经成为我国大城市的一种社会问题,它与每一个人都息息相关,如何更好地处理这种问题,使其减少对人们出行的影响,成为值得每一个人思考的问题。针对大中型城市中的交通拥堵其中的一种现象进行深入的剖析,系统介绍交通拥堵的成因,有针对性地提出如何改善中小学周边地区交通拥堵现象的一些观点和做法。     

长江深水航道水下坝体抛石设备改造

长江下游河段施工区域地形异常复杂、水深和流速条件对抛石坝体形成非常不利。以长江南京以下12.5 m深水航道二期工程口岸直水道整治工程Ⅱ标段为依托，通过改造抛石设备、增加串筒约束构造来降低抛石高度、减小抛石漂移距的方法，减小外界条件对抛石落点的影响，从而达到控制块石落点的目的，实现了水下抛石精准定位。工程应用效果良好，在提高施工质量的同时降低了成本，为类似项目提供了借鉴。     

The Dependency of People on the Great Barrier Reef,Australia

Understanding how people are dependent on Large Scale Marine Protected Areas (LSMPAs) is important for understanding how people might be sensitive to changes that affect these seascapes. We review how resource dependency is conceptualized and propose that it be broadened to include cultural values such as pride in resource status, scientific heritage, appreciation of aesthetics, biodiversity, and lifestyle opportunities. We provide an overview of how local residents (n = 3,181 face-to-face surveys), commercial fishers (n = 210, telephone surveys), and tourism operators (n = 119 telephone surveys) are potentially dependent on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a region currently experiencing significant environmental, social, and economic change. We found that commercial fishers and tourism operators were dependent not only financially on the GBR, but also because of their age, years in the industry and region, lack of education, and the number of dependents. These stakeholders lacked flexibility to secure alternative employment. All stakeholder groups, regardless of economic imperatives, were dependent on the GBR because of their cultural connections. We propose that resource dependency also provides an umbrella concept to describe the cultural services provided by an ecosystem, which can be described through place-based dependence and place-identity.