Waterloo Civic Map Lab

New paper: Strategic analysis of a water rights conflict in the south western United States

Peter Johnson — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 12:00:00 +0000

A new paper by PhD Candidate Simone Philpot has just been published in the Journal of Environmental Management!

Tags: publications, simulation modeling, model, research, students

The impact of climate change on winter ski tourism in the Pyrenees

Peter Johnson — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000

We all know that climate change is having a major impact on weather patterns around the globe. One industry that is particularly exposed to these changes is the ski industry. Though large mountain/high elevation ski resorts may remain insulated from the impacts of shorter ski seasons and more erratic weather, those ski resorts at low altitude are particularly vulnerable to a changing climate. As a mid-latitude, lower elevation (comparatively) ski region, the Pyrenees are one area where the impacts of a changing climate are pronounced.

Tags: giscience, publications, results, simulation modeling, academic, climate, environment, science, simulation, tourism

Why technology adoption constraint research is important

Peter Johnson — Tue, 10 May 2011 12:00:00 +0000

A chapter from my dissertation has been recently published in Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. This paper, titled “Negotiating constraints to the adoption of agent-based modeling in tourism planning (PDF)” presents material from a series of interviews that I conducted with tourism planners in Nova Scotia.

Tags: publications, results, simulation modeling, tools, academic, adoption constraints, geodesign, model, planning, policy, simulation

The desire for a simple model, made with simple tools

Peter Johnson — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:00:00 +0000

The most popular post (by far) on this blog is one where I present a simple version of Butler’s Tourism Area Lifecycle (TALC), done up in Excel: A Simple Tourism Model with Excel

Tags: simulation modeling, tools, tourism, butler's curve, excel, model, spreadsheet, tourism area life cycle

Tourism chapter published in Planning Support Systems volume

Peter Johnson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I’m pleased to announce that a chapter describing the development of TourSim, including a scenario on shifting tourist port of entry and identification of adoption constraints, is in the final stages of preparation for publication. This chapter is part of a new book "Planning Support Systems Best Practice and New Methods" published by Springer and edited by Stan Geertman and John Stillwell.

Tags: simulation modeling, tourism, butler, modeling, planning, publications, scenario, simulation, talc

New data sources and experimental options

Peter Johnson — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve made some major alterations to TourSim, both in the data that it relies on, and the types of experimentation it supports. I’m thinking that this is going to make TourSim much more usable for tourism planning, and begins to incorporate many of the ideas of complexity science (such as adaptation) into TourSim.

Tags: nova scotia tourism, simulation modeling, tourism, adaptation, agent, butler's curve, complexity, lifecycle, model, research, simulation, talc

A simple tourism model with Excel

Peter Johnson — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:00:00 +0000

While there is quite a bit of interest in several fields in agent-based models (ABMs) as an approach to studying issues such as resilience, and thresholds, their complexity and technical nature is a significant barrier to their use. I’ve had a number of discussions with McGill professor Dr. Garry Peterson about alternate modeling approaches. One technology that he uses in both classes and in his publications is a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Tags: simulation modeling, excel, lifecycle, model, tourism

Adaptative destination model

Peter Johnson — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:00:00 +0000

For quite a while now I’ve been trying to expand the types of adaptive behaviour included in TourSim. Currently the tourists display a type of adaptive behaviour, as they move to destinations that satisfy their preferences. In the Baddeck Hotel Development model, tourists would adapt to the development of a new hotel, as more tourists visited Baddeck because of this new type of accommodation.

Tags: nova scotia tourism, simulation modeling, adaptive behaviour, agent, capacity

Baddeck Hotel Development results

Peter Johnson — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve been putting together some sample results using the Baddeck Hotel Development scenario. I ran the model with the default range of accommodations, and then re-ran it with the “Add Hotel at Baddeck” button selected. You can experiment with this same scenario under the Tourism Scenarios tab. Below I’ve added a chart that shows the percentage change in tourist visitation per day (blue bar) and percentage change in income per day (green bar) at select destinations. This shows the difference between the base scenario and the add hotel scenario.

Tags: nova scotia tourism, results, simulation modeling, tourism

Big improvements!

Peter Johnson — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve been hard at work adding more realistic element to TourSim.

Tags: new, nova scotia tourism, simulation modeling