Browsing by Author "Tavares, J."
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- Findkelp, a GIS-based community participation project to assess portuguese kelp conservation statusPublication . Assis, J.; Tavares, D.; Tavares, J.; Cunha, A. H.; Alberto, F.; Serrão, EsterIn almost any Atlantic coastal area of Europe where there is a suitable substratum and adequate water quality, one or more species of kelp may be found. Their high productivity and complex biological structure make kelps especially important members of their communities, particularly when present in dense stands known as “kelp forests”. Currently, these species are subject to important novel constraints of physical and anthropogenic origins that can strongly modify their sustainability, their distribution and the biodiversity of associated species. Along the Portuguese coastline there is a perception by the local and scientific communities that some kelp species abundance is declining, particularly at the southern coast. Nevertheless, no large-scale spatial study of kelp abundance and diversity has been done. With the acronym Findkelp, this study aimed to assess from May to August 2008, the Portuguese kelp conservation status through community participation, field-based observations and large-scale Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. A communication strategy towards scuba divers and other coastal zone users was made to build and educate a team of informed volunteers that worked as independent observers, reporting georeferenced data in an electronic data-base available on the project’s website. At randomly underwater chosen locations (n=56) from the volunteers reported sites (n=388), structural descriptors of kelp populations were groundtruthed, by means of non-destructive sampling techniques (3x50m belt-transects). By crossing the volunteer’s reported data with the groundtruthed data, using error matrices and Kappa statistics with concordance agreement scales, a Portuguese coast line GIS map with perfect agreement (K=0.827) was made including the current distribution, diversity and conservation status of 6 kelp species.
- Smart cities, smart tourism? The case of the city of PortoPublication . Guerra, I.; Borges, F.; Padrão, J.; Tavares, J.; Padrão, M. H.The so-called Smart Cities have been playing an important role in the academic literature as well as in the agenda of public policies. With the forward thinking of “creating” new urban development models, the cities intend to strategically positioning themselves and at the same time develop cooperation networks. Frequently using the Information and Communication Technologies (while as a means to an end and not as an end itself), the cities try to assure a greater economic competitiveness, the environmental sustainability and the reinforcement of citizenship (calling out to people to participate, in the scope of an inclusive logic and in an appeal to creativity and social responsibility).Even the 2020 European strategy promotes this development.The geographic scope of the study is limited to the city of Porto. This is justified by the fact that, in 2015, Porto was one the five European cities selected to participate in the GrowSmarter (model of organization of cities of the future), an ambitious project with the objective of making Europe more sustainable and environmentally intelligent. Besides that, the Portuguese Smart Cities Index, 2016, points out the city of Oporto as the Portuguese city with better results in what concerns the main vectors of intelligence (policy, strategies and projects implemented, edification, mobility, energy and smart services).At the same time, in the international press, the city of Porto appears as a reference for its architectural wealth and as one of the more indicated European destinations for one who would like to enjoy quality holidays at a reasonable price.That is perhaps why Shermans Travel presents Porto as one of the top 10 destinations for intelligent tourists. The purpose of the present study is to understand if the emergence of smart cities can be in some way connected to the appearance of smart tourism. For such a purpose, we will study the city of Porto and a survey will be conducted among the tourists of the city.This article compiles some of the first results of the study, referring to the data collected during the months of August and September of 2017, and intends mainly to set out some hypotheses about the motivation for the choice of a tourist destination, that will be developed in future works.