A Study of the Contribution of Information Technology on the Growth of Tourism Economy Using Cross-Sectional Data

Information technology (IT) has dramatically changed tourism industry, particularly in facilitating and improving information discovery and dissemination in tourism industry. Prior research has identified the key role that IT plays in the development of tourism industry. However, IT is examined solely, while other factors that drive the development of tourism industry are neglected in these studies. Guided by the new economic growth theory, this paper integrates fixed capital, labor, and IT and further examine how they together affect the development of tourism industry. Based on the cross-sectional tourism data of 2014 in 30 provinces in China, this article runs gray correlation analysis first and then applies a Cobb-Douglas production function model. The results indicate that fixed capital, labor, and IT are all correlated with the total tourism revenue at a certain degree, and that the development of tourism industry replies more on labor and IT than on fixed capital. Labor is the factor that makes the largest contribution to the development of tourism industry.

Optimizing Waiting Room Utilization in High Speed Railway Stations Based on an Information Integration Approach

The setting of railway station waiting room and waiting zones relates to passengers' feeling and satisfaction. In this article, the authors develop an optimization model for railway station waiting room assignment, as well as considering adjustment of platforms. With four types of improvement strategies: zone optimization, room optimization, time optimization and interactive priority policy, this optimal model aims to effectively and efficiently improve the railway service quality and security.

Cyber Physical System (CPS)-Based Industry 4.0: A Survey

Cyber Physical System (CPS) has provided an outstanding foundation to build advanced industrial systems and applications by integrating innovative functionalities through Internet of Things (IoT) and Web of Things (WoB) to enable connection of the operations of the physical reality with computing and communication infrastructures. A wide range of industrial CPS-based applications have been developed and deployed in Industry 4.0. In order to understand the development of CPS in Industry 4.0, this paper reviews the current research of CPS, key enabling technologies, major CPS applications in industries, and identifies research trends and challenges. A main contribution of this review paper is that it summarizes the current state-of-the-art CPS in Industry 4.0 from Web of Science (WoS) database (including 595 articles) and proposes a potential framework of CPS systematically.

An information integration approach for waiting room management in high speed railway stations

Purpose

This paper aims to propose a systematic approach to facilitate passenger flow in high speed rail (HSR) stations. A case study is conducted to validate the approach.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper argues that HSR station management consists of train management, station capacity management, waiting room management and passenger flow management, and that two-way and dynamic information exchange exists among the components. Accordingly, the proposed approach integrates the components in HSR station management based on information exchange and heuristic algorithms. A HSR station in China with four regular waiting rooms, one mother-and-infant waiting room and one VIP waiting room located on two floors are chosen for a case study. An arrangement plan for waiting zones and waiting rooms is generated by following the proposed approach.

Findings

The result of the case study indicates that the proposed approach is capable of arranging waiting zones and waiting rooms quickly and effectively to maximize utilization of waiting room capacity and to minimize passenger walking distance from waiting rooms to platforms.

Research limitations/implications

The management problem of railway station waiting room also relates to some other factors such as platforms, tracks adjustment and delay of the trains. As an emerging technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to offer promising solutions to transform the operation and role of many existing industrial systems such as transportation systems including railway systems. The future study of the authors will focus on IoT intelligent railway management system.

Practical implications

The result indicates that the proposed method is an effective solution to the management of railway station waiting room, which can be applied to railway station management system.

Social implications

China Railway System provides service to billions of passengers. This research has significant social-economic impacts.

Originality/value

This paper fulfills an information integrated approach for improving waiting room management in high speed railway stations and a case study testing the approach.