Maria Morfoulaki

• Doctor of Engineering
• Operational Scientist A at Centre for Research and Technology Hellas

This paper examines whether digitalization and smart solutions can be a crucial factor for reaching sustainability in tourism. It employs a literature review in combination with a comparative case study analysis and empirical data from different areas of Europe. The methodology employs a structured questionnaire distributed to regional tourism stak...

The integration of sustainable tourism and mobility planning is crucial for addressing the complex challenges of environmental conservation, socio-economic development, and community well-being in touristic destinations. This paper introduces the SUSTOURMOB (Sustainable Tourism and Mobility) cycle, a strategy designed to support common sustainable...

This study investigates how lifestyle factors influence mobility choices within the metropolitan area of Thessaloniki, which is the second largest city in Greece. The primary objective is to understand the interplay between lifestyle attitudes and preferences for sustainable mobility options. This research utilizes data from a comprehensive survey...

European cities are motivated to act towards the achievement of climate-neutral mobility solutions. Often, though, they are facing many challenges when bringing (innovative) sustainable mobility solutions forward. Capacity building that fills the skills gaps and/or enables the acquisition of new ones related to the planning and implementation of su...

European cities are motivated to act towards the achievement of climate-neutral mobility solutions. Often, though, they are facing many challenges when bringing (innovative) sustainable mobility solutions forward. Capacity building that fills skills gap and/or enables acquisition of new ones related to the planning and implementation of such soluti...

The current paper is based on data collected within the framework of the Inter-Connect PLUS project, with a focus on incorporating new norms before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. A questionnaire was conducted in four countries of the Adriatic-Ionian (ADRION) Region: Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Albania. The collected data from the surve...

This paper examines whether destination cards can simultaneously serve tourists’ needs and sustainability goals. It provides useful insights for tourism authorities and policymakers in designing a smart tourist card that meets the needs of tourists while preserving and supporting areas’ wellbeing. Taking Thessaloniki city as a case study, a tourist...

Supporting that public and active transport based solutions are the backbone of passengers’ transport systems in order to achieve ‘accessibility for all’ and ‘sustainability for the planet’ goals, the current paper presents key takeaways of an extended literature review of relevant mobility policy papers and documents while further incorporating th...

Seeking for a positive insight in the Covid-19 emergency situation, it can be well said that from the beginning of the pandemic spread, impacts on transport and tourism sector and adopted policy measures were investigated, as cities noticed a behavioral change towards alternative transport modes. In most cases, governments recognized that the promo...

Sport tourism is a fast-growing segment of tourism offering new perspectives and supporting travelers’ behavior shift towards active living that is a boost for sustainable destinations. These interrelations between active living, active travelling, and sport tourism have a powerful environmental, economic, and social impact. Based on the recognized...

Experience has shown that when a target group that benefits from or is affected by an intervention is included in the planning procedure from the beginning, underlying success factors are revealed and respected. Coming to sustainable mobility planning, an ideal participatory scheme (optimal synthesis of different perspectives) accompanying the sust...

Engagement in sustainable mobility planning seems to act as a starting point to unlock a new era of responsible and sustainable behaviors. After almost a two-years experience of a global crisis (COVID-19) revealing that the only way out is through jointly walking on the way into sustainability and resilience, engaging people in shifting to sustaina...

Being spatio-temporal variations of urban road traffic a critical information for understanding and predicting accurately traffic, the current paper focuses on urban road traffic dynamics understanding by introducing the notion of causality. Using 15-min aggregated travel time series from taxi GPS data, causal networks are developed. The results re...

The current chapter aims to introduce and familiarize young people (the potential policy makers of tomorrow) with basic notions and principles of urban mobility, show them the challenges, educate them on sustainable urban mobility planning and motivate them to become active agents of change. The topics covered are (1) EU actions on supporting urban...

The publication of the White and Green European Transport Paper in 2011 highlighted the need of shifting the urban mobility planning, towards more sustainable means of transport (public transport, bicycle, and pedestrian trips). The new urban mobility planning aims in giving space to the human (citizen) rather than to the motorized vehicles (cars)....

One of the most crucial steps during the implementation of a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) as well the relevant transportation projects is the final measures and policies’ selection that will be realized in order for the plan to achieve the study area targets. There are many methodologies that have been used for a specific purpose, with co...

Since 2013, the European cities have been encouraged to develop local Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) according to the specific procedure that was launched by the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG Move) and updated in 2019. One of the most critical steps in this 12-step procedure is the assessment—with specific criteria—of...

Τourism and cruise tourism is an important economic activity in most Ionian Islands, such as Corfu, which is located at the northern part of the Ionian Sea at the entrance of the Adriatic Sea. All inhabitants of Corfu directly or indirectly are occupied with tourism which of course supports the economy of the island but also brings a lot of difficu...

Urban traffic is undoubtedly a dynamic phenomenon presenting variations over both time and space, that in the majority of cases are the result of a mixture of, either well known (i.e. weather, seasonality) or not easily predictable (i.e. events, accidents) external factors. Identification of similarities in the performance of different urban road p...

The sensor-era has brought rapid changes in transportation; the abundance of data has started changing the traditional way in which planners and engineers approach mobility. Nowadays, traffic monitoring and information provision systems heavily rely on floating car data usually of special vehicles (e.g., trucks, taxi), and the question that arises...

ICDSST 2020 is EWG-DSS’s 6th International Conference, following the five previous successful International Conferences on Decision Support System Technology (ICDSST 2019 in Madeira; ICDSST 2018 in Crete; ICDSST 2017 in Namur; ICDSST 2016 in Plymouth; and ICDSST 2015 in Belgrade) as listed below. Since 1989 when the EWG-DSS was founded, the societ...

SUSTAIN is an ERASMUS+ project with an innovative perspective on urban transportation Its target is to promote the importance of sustainability on the everyday problem of urban transportation among the students of higher education, which are the policy makers of tomorrow In order to achieve its goals, the research team will develop a course that wi...

ICDSST – the International Conference on Decision Support System Technology – is the flagship event of the Euro Working Group of Decision Support Systems (EWG-DSS). The ICDSST series of conference is relatively young and vibrant (since 2015), while its predecessor, including EWG-DSS workshops and summer schools, has a long tradition. The EWG-DSS wa...

Putting citizens in the position of city planners while giving them a sense of purpose and plans' ownership is a difficult task since the win-win effect of participating in mobility planning is, in the majority of cases, not properly communicated. Aiming to display to travelers the value of their contribution with ultimate scope to increase the par...

The great abundance of multi-sensor traffic data (traditional traffic data sources - loops, cameras and radars accompanied or even replaced by the most recent - Bluetooth detectors, GPS enabled floating car data) although offering the chance to exploit Big Data advantages in traffic planning, management and monitoring, has also opened the debate on...

Illegal parking, particularly in urban areas, can cause severe delays and contribute significantly to traffic congestion. The main objective of the present work is to assess, using microsimulation modeling, the impacts of the phenomenon of double parking along an urban axis. A case study of an urban axis of the city of Thessaloniki, that daily serv...

School transportation is a special and important issue for society, as it refers and involves a very sensitive age group. Therefore, the appropriate design as well as the provision of maximum safety to students, are necessary actions need to be taken into account for the smooth functioning of a society. Within the last years, research in this field...

School Transportation is a crucial issue for society, as it ensures that all children have access to schooling and brings students of all ages to schools and other educational facilities where they can study. An inefficient provision of such a service voids the right to free education especially for children originating from low-income families or...

Introduction: As part of the overall goal of carbon emissions reduction, European cities are expected to encourage the electrification of urban transport. In order to prepare themselves to welcome the increased number of electric vehicles circulating in the city networks in the near future, they are expected to deploy networks of public electric ve...

Called to seek fresh thinking in mobility management, European cities present strong interest in parking management. In contrast with traditional approaches where parking problem was treated as a problem of inadequate supply whose solution lies on abundant, free and on a first-come basis parking provision, the rational of parking management is cons...

Traveling to school is a complex undertaking that refers to students’ daily trips from their residences to their schools and vice versa. The school bus routing problem differs from a conventional vehicle routing problem because it involves a procedure of receiving and delivering transported vulnerable objects (students). In the Greek school transpo...

Urban logistics is an integral part of the proper functioning of a city. It generates employment, serves and supports industrial and commercial activities that are daily taking place in modern urban centres, considered to be important levers of development and prosperity for a region. In recent years, interest in sustainable freight distribution pr...

One of the most discussed concepts in relation to sustainable mobility, promoted both at European and global level, is that of electrification of mobility. Recently, Thessaloniki has started making the first steps towards electrifying its urban fleet, expecting to reduce fuel consumption and air pollution and noise imposed by the transport sector i...

The rapidly increasing development of electric vehicles’ market has enabled more and more cities worldwide to adopt electromobility in public transport as a way to create a more friendly and healthy urban environment for their citizens. Among them, taxis are the main candidates for replacement with electric ones, considering the fact that they make...

Changes in the usage of a particular urban or regional area have immediate effects on transportation, such as the development of a new multimodal terminal within a city, or the creation of a business park in its outskirts. Thus far, this correlation has been under-researched at a national level in Greece. As a result, its effects on trip generation...

Thessaloniki undergoes radical changes; the city, although negatively affected by the recurrent effects of the economic crisis, is tentatively moving along the path to recovery. Taking advantage of lower rates in car use due to economic reasons, a Public Transport (PT) system reform, where the impact of adding value can thus be bigger, should be po...

Given the importance of reducing Europe's dependence on imported oil and cutting carbon emissions from road transport by 60% until 2050, the EU has set the goal to diminish the number of conventionally fuelled vehicles in urban areas. Cities are expected to develop comprehensive sustainability plans and establish an aggressive strategy to reduce tr...

The current paper focuses its study on the Southeast Europe (SEE) and tries to identify real passenger needs (demand) which can reveal rail dynamic and competitiveness in specific connections. Based on a dedicated examination of 11 SEE city hubs (Bologna, Venice, Trieste, Ljubljana, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Thessaloniki, Sofia, Zagreb and Buch...

The aim of this paper is to identify potential strategies for establishing more sustainable transport systems, in the island of Corfu, Greece. Thus, it investigates the implementation of “intermediate” and “flexible” transport and logistics schemes, operated by eco-friendly vehicles, allowing Corfu Island to achieve high standards of energy efficie...

The present paper presents the transportation planning methodology applied in the city of Nicosia, Cyprus, within the framework of Nicosia’s “Integrated Mobility Master Plan”. Unique characteristics of the capital of Cyprus, such as the sparse coverage, low service quality and even lower market penetration of the public transport network, the inade...

This paper presents a risk assessment algorithm that can be integrated within advanced safety monitoring systems of urban road networks. The research conducted is part of the MISS (Monitor Integrated Safety System) research project funded under the 6th Framework Program of the European Union. MISS aims to develop an innovative platform to dynamical...

The paper project emphasizes on pilot actions which will improve quality and governance schemes of transport services connecting major rail hubs in South East Europe: Bologna, Venice, Trieste, Ljubljana, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Thessaloniki, Sofia, Zagreb, Bucharest (the hubs 11 involved in RAIL4SEE project). It presents comparative analyses...

Although ICT applications in transport and logistics have gone a long way especially in the past decade, supply chain visibility still remains a challenging issue to be tackled. This is especially important in the case of a Med port-rail-dryport setting, as the FutureMed project testifies. Cooperative action of the supply chain actors involved in s...

Faced with increasing car use, Public Transport (PT) needs to become more competitive. This requires better understanding of both the user needs and the determinants of mode choice. So-called Cooperative Systems, i.e. real-time communications between the vehicles and between them and the infrastructure or the user, are applied worldwide enhancing s...

The aim of this paper is to propose a new scheme for the reorganization of a public transport system in order to cover seasonal demand. The scope of the paper is to enhance the use of the public transport system and to minimize the use of private cars. The island of Kos is one of the Greek islands that hosts every summer more than 1,000,000 visitor...

The paper focuses on enhancing Passenger Intermodality aiming at developing new business models for interconnectivity purposes. The current work initiates with the description of the results derived from two questionnaire surveys conducted in Patras port (a customer survey and a more 'targeted' survey to the authority of the port) which aimed at me...

The improvement of urban mobility has become a key concern to all institutions and researchers dealing with transport research. It was the vital need to change the “culture” of urban mobility promoting environmentally friendly modes of transport and the rational use of private car that forwarded Urban Mobility Centres in Greece and other countries....

This paper addresses quality considerations in public transportation systems and, in particular, the relation between quality of public transport service and customer satisfaction. Its aim is to provide insights into the factors that affect transit-rider satisfaction and to present a model to calculate the probability of customer satisfaction. The...