Maritime policy in Scotland.

This paper begins by defining the meaning of the term `maritime policy'. Since devolution in the UK, the opening of the new Scottish parliament in 1998 and the creation of the Scottish Executive, little effort has been made to establish a distinct maritime policy for Scotland. As was evident prior to devolution, the primary emphasis from any maritime policy perspective has continued to be a focus on lifeline island ferry services. This ignores significant developments in several other key maritime transport sectors, and this paper provides examples of areas that require some form of policy response, including intra-European short sea shipping, UK coastal shipping, urban/river transport and global container shipping. Long-standing institutional bias against maritime transport coupled with subsidy devoted almost entirely to land transport systems has resulted in a quite distorted marketplace. This suggests that a maritime policy is now imperative if maritime transport is to play a more significant role in the overall transport system. Further discussion centres on the need to consider, from a Scottish policy perspective, the role of various state-sponsored maritime service providers and how these bodies might fit better within evolving policy. The conclusion is that formulation of a maritime policy by the Scottish Executive is overdue and that a degree of restructuring of transport responsibilities within the Executive, combined with adequate resource allocation towards the maritime industry, will be necessary in order that market distortions can be overcome, so enabling Scotland to fully exploit the competitive and environmental advantages that maritime transport can provide.

An integrated firewall policy validation tool.

Security policies are increasingly being implemented by organisations. Policies are mapped to device configurations to enforce the policies. This is typically performed manually by network administrators. The development and management of these enforcement policies is a difficult and error prone task. This thesis describes the development and evaluation of an off-line firewall policy parser and validation tool. This provides the system administrator with a textual interface and the vendor specific low level languages they trust and are familiar with, but the support of an off-line compiler tool. The tool was created using the Microsoft C#.NET language, and the Microsoft Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This provided an object environment to create a flexible and extensible system, as well as simple Web and Windows prototyping facilities to create GUI front-end applications for testing and evaluation. A CLI was provided with the tool, for more experienced users, but it was also designed to be easily integrated into GUI based applications for non-expert users. The evaluation of the system was performed from a custom built GUI application, which can create test firewall rule sets containing synthetic rules, to supply a variety of experimental conditions, as well as record various performance metrics. The validation tool was created, based around a pragmatic outlook, with regard to the needs of the network administrator. The modularity of the design was important, due to the fast changing nature of the network device languages being processed. An object oriented approach was taken, for maximum changeability and extensibility, and a flexible tool was developed, due to the possible needs of different types users. System administrators desire, low level, CLI-based tools that they can trust, and use easily from scripting languages. Inexperienced users may prefer a more abstract, high level, GUI or Wizard that has an easier to learn process. Built around these ideas, the tool was implemented, and proved to be a usable, and complimentary addition to the many network policy-based systems currently available. The tool has a flexible design and contains comprehensive functionality. As opposed to some of the other tools which perform across multiple vendor languages, but do not implement a deep range of options for any of the languages. It compliments existing systems, such as policy compliance tools, and abstract policy analysis systems. Its validation algorithms were evaluated for both completeness, and performance. The tool was found to correctly process large firewall policies in just a few seconds. A framework for a policy-based management system, with which the tool would integrate, is also proposed. This is based around a vendor independent XML-based repository of device configurations, which could be used to bring together existing policy management and analysis systems.

Heritage interpretation challenges and management issues at film-induced tourism heritage attractions: Case studies of Rosslyn Chapel and Alnwick Castle

Although previous research has widely acknowledged the phenomenon of film-induced tourism, there is a paucity of research in relation to management of film-induced tourism at built heritage sites. This research, underpinned by a constructivist paradigm, draws on three distinct fields of study – heritage tourism management, film-induced tourism and heritage interpretation – in order to provide a contribution to the heritage management field and address this particular gap in knowledge. Relying on the method of semi-structured interviews with managers, guides and visitors at Rosslyn Chapel (RC) and Alnwick Castle (AC), this thesis provides a rich understanding of how heritage interpretation can address a range of management challenges at heritage sites where film-induced tourism has occurred. These heritage visitor attractions (HVAs) were specifically selected as case studies as they have played different roles in media products. Rosslyn Chapel (RC) was an actual place named in The Da Vinci Code (TDVC) book and then film, whereas Alnwick Castle (AC) served as a backdrop for the first two Harry Potter (HP) films. Findings of this research include a range of management challenges at both RC and AC such as an increase in visitor numbers; seasonality issues; changes in visitor profile; revenue generation concerns; conservation, access, and visitor experience; and the complex relationship between heritage management and tourism activities. The findings also reveal film-induced tourism’s implications for heritage interpretation such as the various visitors’ expectations for heritage interpretation, changes to heritage interpretation as a result of film-induced tourism, and issues with commodification. These findings also demonstrate that film-induced tourism to some extent influenced visitors’ preferences for heritage interpretation, though visitors’ preferences differed from one to another. This thesis argues that, in the context of film-induced tourism at HVAs, as evident from the two case studies considered, heritage interpretation can be a valuable management tool and can also play a significant role in the quality of the visitors’ experience.