Multistage Impacts of the Heavy Rain Process on the Travel Speeds of Urban Roads

Heavy rain causes the highest drop in travel speeds compared with light and moderate rain because it can easily induce flooding on road surfaces, which can continue to hinder urban transportation even after the rainfall is over. However, very few studies have specialized in researching the multistage impacts of the heavy rain process on urban roads, and the cumulative effects of heavy rain in road networks are often overlooked. In this study, the heavy rain process is divided into three consecutive stages, i.e., prepeak, peak, and postpeak. The impact of heavy rain on a road is represented by a three-dimensional traffic speed change ratio vector. Then, the k-means clustering method is implemented to reveal the distinct patterns of speed change ratio vectors. Finally, the characteristics of the links in each cluster are analyzed. An empirical study of Shenzhen, China suggests that there are three major impact patterns in links. The differences among links associated with the three impact patterns are related to the road category, travel speeds in no rain days, and the number of transportation facilities. The findings in this research can contribute to a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between the heavy rain process and the travel speeds of urban roads and provide valuable information for traffic management and personal travel in heavy rain weather.

Sir William Jones (1746–1794) and the Early Orientalist Discourse on Sufism

Many theories have been proposed to discuss Sufism in terms of its linguistic origins and its role in spiritual knowledge, its concepts and ideas, and cultural influences. Both Muslim and orientalist scholars have offered opposing views on the beginnings of Sufism. Unfortunately, Western orientalists were the first to research this topic, and their ideas greatly influenced later scholars. This study examines how early British orientalists, particularly Sir William Jones, approached the study of Sufism. Jones represents the early development of British orientalism, which started in the form of personal travel accounts long before orientalist societies were established to support them. Only the later ‘experts on the Orient’ created scholarly circles that followed a more objective and systematic approach to studying Muslim cultures, yet often persisted in the erroneous claim that Sufism was an external and foreign element in Islamic culture.

Exploring the Interactions between Online Shopping, In-Store Shopping, and Weekly Travel Behavior using a 7-Day Shopping Survey in Lisbon, Portugal

The steady growth of online shopping in the last decades has led to an impact on personal travel and on freight transport that is yet to be fully grasped. Previous research on the subject offers mixed findings, with several studies pointing to complementarity between online and in-store shopping, while others suggest substitution, modification, or neutrality. Using data from a 7-day shopping survey in Lisbon, Portugal, which involved 400 respondents, this paper applies structural equation modeling to explore the relationships among online shopping and in-store shopping preferences, while also considering the period of the week in which the purchases took place, since it is expected that the interaction between shopping and other personal travel behavior varies between weekdays and weekends. The result shows that online shopping preference leads to more online purchases, while in-store shopping preference leads to more in-store purchases. Furthermore, online shopping on weekdays has a positive association with both online and in-store shopping on weekends, which supports a complementarity effect. This effect is linked to a younger population, which commutes by car, and lives in less central areas. Since deliveries are becoming increasingly faster, while living centrally is becoming progressively more difficult, complementarity might give way to substitution, with the foreseeable challenges to maintaining street vitality, if this issue is not addressed timely by policymakers.

Virtual-Physical Space "Bulgarian Cultural and Historical Heritage"

The article presents a virtual physical space for storage and presentation of digitized Bulgarian cultural, historical and similar sites. The space is realized with the help of integrated technology, including means of artificial intelligence, enhanced with modern technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things) and CPSS (Cyber-Physical-Social System). The advantages of space compared to the usual approaches for developing this type of systems are discussed. The objects digitized in accordance with the CCO standard (Cataloging Cultural Objects) are stored in a distributed knowledge base, implemented mainly as ontologies. The space provides users with a personal travel guide who is able to understand and fulfill their wishes and preferences. Keywords: Virtual-Physical Space (ViPS); Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO)

The Information Economy of Early Modern Travel Writing

England’s relations with European states were mediated through an information economy that depended not only on credential extraterritorial agents but also the illicit labor of individual travelers and other informants. The earliest forms of English travel writing emerged out of this context of the state’s networks of intelligence gathering. As described in the opening section, most travel texts from this period were not autobiographical accounts of personal travel but rather advice texts—often written by leading state officials—that outlined procedures for organizing the experience of travel and converting it into narrative form. After an initial section surveying travel advice texts of the Elizabethan period, the chapter analyzes the influence of this tradition on the practices of writing and narrative forms of the first-person travel accounts of Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary (1617) and Thomas Coryat’s Crudities (1611).

THE TOURIST BLOG: BETWEEN PERSONAL TRAVELOGUE AND COMMUNICATION FOR VALORISING CULTURAL HERITAGE

In the context of the specifics of tourism discourse and communication through blogs, the paper presents an analysis of the image of the cultural heritage of the municipality of Kazanlak in 30 publications in French-language tourist blogs from the last ten years. The various discursive strategies and linguistic tools that can be identified in these texts are explored through the prism of their contribution to structuring a presentation that goes beyond the story of personal travel and emphasizes authenticity, identity and axiological charge, aesthetic value and the invitation to discover alterity in the described tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Elements that bring the discourse thus constructed closer to a communication that valorises cultural property. Thus, beyond the possibility of outlining the image of cultural heritage perceived by the foreign tourist, useful with a view to the efforts to promote it, the issue of the foreign tourist blog as a potential interesting component of communication campaigns in the field of cultural tourism deserves attention.

Literary Tourism in Krško: Exploring the Famous Scholar Janez Vajkard Valvasor and his House in Krško

Literary Tourism is one of the global tourism types on the market, which has its different patterns. This paper is based on secondary data and information about Literary Tourism, and it examines the city of Krško and the role of its most famous literary figure, the great scholar Janez Vajkard Valvasor (1641 - 1693). Krško is a town situated in eastern Slovenia, most recognisable because of its Nuclear Power Plant, literary places and figures such as Janez Vajkard Valvasor, Josipina Hočevar and Vladimir Štoviček. The paper explores Literary Tourism, its connection to Krško, and Janez Vajkard Valvasor as an important literary figure who lived and died in this area. The paper concludes with a discussion based on a personal travel experience through the literary places of the city of Krško.