Search results

In two previous papers (Nyberg 1990 and 1993) the development of tourism in Sweden has been followed for the turbulent period of the late 80's and the early 90's. This paper recapitulates some of that discussion and updates some of the figures with added information on domestic recreational travel during the main summer holiday season.

Destination 21 is a new national eco‐label for Danish tourism destinations established in 2000. It is intended to help destinations reach sustainable tourism development by working towards a number of national and local sustainability objectives. This paper discusses these objectives in relation to the underlying ambition to use the eco‐label to market Denmark in international markets. The concept of sustainable tourism development is somewhat controversial when compared to the original agreements on sustainable development, established through the Brundtland report and other UN documents. The different dimensions of sustainable development in general are less easy to adapt to the compromises needed when focusing on tourism development alone.

Free at last, NCR focuses on its technological and market niches to grow and profit as a centenarian start‐up.

Higher education preparing for careers in the tourism sector has met with a lot of controversy over the years.

This project is part of a larger research program called The determinants of tourism, which is under way at Östersund university. The main ambition is to have researchers representing different disciplines cooperating around a central theme and using similar methods and approaches. The disciplines concerned are, so far, sociology, psychology, economics, human geography and informatics.

The aim of this paper is to present a concept where social learning is used in education. Thematically, the concept is suitable for complex, interdisciplinary, societal challenges with a high degree of uncertainty regarding future changes. It is exemplified here by the need to link disaster risk reduction (DRR) with climate change adaptation (CCA) and flood risk management (FRM). The concept answers to the variety of adopted solutions and build-up of knowledge that exist, as a consequence of far-reaching local liabilities and initiatives. The concept advocates building of platforms and procedures where managers, stakeholders, researchers, policy makers, and regular students can meet, interact and learn from local examples.

The concept IntECR (integrated education, research and collaboration) has been tested in two courses during 2009 and 2010 around the Swedish lakes Vänern and Mälaren. Seminars and field visits were arranged in ten different cities. Participants replied anonymously to a course evaluation and were questioned in groups about their perceived benefit from the concept.

Informal networking, holistic perspective, shared problem identification and the positive possibility to study several examples of local management in arrangements with high degree of structural openness, were mentioned by the participants as positive outcome of the concept.

The use of this educational concept aims to increase the adaptive capacity of societal entities through raised capacity of their individual members. The applied example is timely, relevant and a contribution to DRR and CCA.

The purpose of this paper is to describe conceptions of feasibility of a haptic navigation system for persons with a visual impairment (VI).

Six persons with a VI who were white cane users were tasked with traversing a predetermined route in a corridor environment using the haptic navigation system. To see whether white cane experience translated to using the system, the participants received no prior training. The procedures were video-recorded, and the participants were interviewed about their conceptions of using the system. The interviews were analyzed using content analysis, where inductively generated codes that emerged from the data were clustered together and formulated into categories.

The participants quickly figured out how to use the system, and soon adopted their own usage technique. Despite this, locating objects was difficult. The interviews highlighted the desire to be able to feel at a distance, with several scenarios presented to illustrate current problems. The participants noted that their previous white cane experience helped, but that it nevertheless would take a lot of practice to master using this system. The potential for the device to increase security in unfamiliar environments was mentioned. Practical problems with the prototype were also discussed, notably the lack of auditory feedback.

One novel aspect of this field trial is the way it was carried out. Prior training was intentionally not provided, which means that the findings reflect immediate user experiences. The findings confirm the value of being able to perceive things beyond the range of the white cane; at the same time, the participants expressed concerns about that ability. Another key feature is that the prototype should be seen as a navigation aid rather than an obstacle avoidance device, despite the interaction similarities with the white cane. As such, the intent is not to replace the white cane as a primary means of detecting obstacles.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how local early warning systems (EWSs) for floods are established at the municipality level in Sweden. The study also aims to analyse the role of EWSs in a risk management context. The overall purpose of this study is to elucidate how and to what extent the adoption of local EWSs can generate value-added benefits throughout the wider risk management process.

Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with supervisors at each municipality in order to depict how local EWS are established at the municipality level in Sweden. The interviews went through a content analysis with respect to theory on EWS and theory on the risk management process.

The possible effects from an EWS is not only reduced flood losses but also potential spinoff. The possibility of spinoff effects from the system, but also the mitigating effectiveness in case of a flood is largely dependent on the well-being of the organisation and its risk management processes.

This study widens the understanding of the value of an EWS and that the organisational culture and state of risk management system has influence on the availability of such value. Identifying the potential added value from EWSs is important from a more general disaster risk reduction perspective, as it helps to further motivate implementation of proactive risk management measures. This knowledge can be of help to others who investigate the possibilities of investing in EWSs.

Seit über 30 Jahren hatte die AIEST nicht mehr das Privileg, auf deutschem Boden einen seiner alljährlichen Kongresse durchzuführen.