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Sharing economy and contemporary tourism are two emerging concepts that urge to be investigated together with new ubiquitous and immersive technologies, in the tourism and hospitality sector. In this rich scenario, we designed and implemented ShareCities, a platform to foster remote direct information exchange and meaningful interactions among tourists and locals. Exploiting ShareCities we here present an extended analysis on the opportunity to use people-to-people recommendation criteria based on proximity. We hence defined three criteria which drove our analysis: i) profile similarity, ii) geographical proximity, and iii) random exploration. Through an online questionnaire, we collect answers from 126 young-adult students, obtaining a general positive interest in the three criteria but also concerns in terms of privacy, trust, and feeling of disorientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world that is getting increasingly digital and interconnected, and where more and more physical objects are integrated into the information network (Internet of Things, IoT), Data Visualization can facilitate the understanding of huge volumes of data. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a testbed where IoT and Data Visualization have been exploited to increase the sustainability and safety of the Cesena (Smart) Campus. In particular, we detail the overall system architecture and the interactive dashboard that facilitates the management of the campus premises and the timetabling. Exploiting our system, we show how we can improve the campus sustainability (in terms of energy saving) and safety (considering the COVID-19 restrictions and regulations). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action addressed not only to governments but also to businesses and civil society. In this scenario, Universities play a key role in achieving the SDGs and, also, in creating awareness about these global issues. As an example, the University of Bologna is carrying out several initiatives related to sustainability matters. Considering, in particular, the environmental dimension, the University undertook different strategies to reduce the waste of paper, embracing the dematerialization and paperless movements. To make these initiatives visible to the University community and to increase awareness about these issues, we designed a system that intends to provide data related to the implications of such initiatives in terms of paper waste avoided and benefits for the environment, to be exploited using different devices. In particular, this study focuses on the design and the evaluation of two infographics, conceived by two different groups of experts and researchers: one "animated" and one "aesthetic". The evaluation intends to present the differences in terms of perceived design and informative dimensions, with the final aim to present insights on the design of infographics able to foster awareness, targeting specific communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interconnected computational devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) context make possible to collect real-time data about a specific environment. The IoT paradigm can be exploited together with data visualization techniques to put into effect intelligent environments, where pervasive technologies enable people to experience and interact with the generated data. In this paper, we present a case study where these emerging areas and related technologies have been explored to benefit communities, making their members actively involved as central players of such an intelligent environment. To give practical effect to our approach, we designed and developed a system, named Smart Campus, composed of: i) an infrastructure made of sensors to collect real-time data in a University Campus, and ii) a rich web-based application to interact with spatio-temporal data, available in a public interactive touch monitor. To validate the system and grasp insights, we involved 135 students through a survey, and we extracted meaningful data from the interactive sessions with the public display. Results show that this Campus community understood the potential of the system and students are willing to actively contribute to it, pushing us to better investigate future scenarios where students can participate with ideas, visualizations/services to integrate into the web-based system, as well as sensors to plug into the infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]