Tourism planning informatization

The Tourism activity, due to its own characteristics, causes high environmental impact and its development should be influenced by the environmental characteristics of each region. The Information Systems, mainly those which represent the geographical information, will permit the development of a design, allowing the Decision-Maker the consult, the management and the presentation of decision schemes based on the defined measures of the Tourism Planning of a region. As the information associated with this design should be real and update, the Internet should be used as a means of access to the information of the region. The design presents the schemes associated to each decision, offering competitive advantages to the Decision-Makers involved in the decision process, since it is possible to evaluate, foresee and control the future environmental impacts of Tourism.

GIS on tourism planning: preventing the impacts caused by the developing tourism activity in a specific site

The environment is one of the greatest concerns of humankind. Nowadays, the activities which improve or destroy it must be assessed and controlled by efficient means which should permit the control of environmental impact caused by the development of these activities. This document presents an information system implementation, as a Decision Support system, allowing the Decision Maker to evaluate, foresee and control the future environmental impact of Tourism through consultation, the management and the presentation of decision schemes based on defined measures of a regional tourism planning.

Sistemas de informação para a gestão turística

Nowadays, to be competitive in society means to have a technological framework that fi ts customer responses. In tourism, the need for ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is even more important, since to sell the tourist product it is crucial to disclose the information that characterizes it, plus, it is necessary to organize, manage and deal with it in accordance with the tourists’ expectations. After the tourist product has been consumed, it is important to share the experience with other travellers. The process of purchase and consumption of a tourist product is possible only if tourists and professionals have access to the information required, and for this it is necessary to use systems that can: manage results, flights and customer loyalty, distribute information and travel planning, among other things. All these systems have tourist information management in common, which leads to the conclusion that they are indispensable to tourism. This paper presents several information systems that coexist in the tourism sector, as well as those used in tourist distribution channels. Finally we show the trends that these systems are causing in tourism.

Evaluation of the human factor in the scheduling of smart appliances in smart grids

Recently there has been an increase of interest in implementing a new set of home appliances, known as Smart Appliances that integrate Information Technologies, the Internet of Things and the ability of communicating with other devices. While Smart Appliances are characterized as an important milestone on the path to the Smart Grid, by being able to automatically schedule their loads according to a tariff or reflecting the power that is generated using renewable sources, there is not a clear understanding on the impact that the behavior of such devices will have in the comfort levels of users, when they shift their working periods to earlier, or later than, a preset time. Given these considerations, in this work we analyse the results of an assessment survey carried out to a group of Home Appliance users regarding their habits when dealing with these machines and the subjective impact in quality caused by either finishing its programs before or after the time limit set by the user. The results of this work are expected to be used as input for the evaluation of load scheduling algorithms running in energy management systems. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.