Low Carbon Footprint Routes for Bird Watching

Abstract

Abstract:Bird watching is one of many recreational activities popular in ecotourism. Its popularity, therefore, prompts the need for studies on energy conservation. One such environmentally friendly approach toward minimizing bird watching's ecological impact is ensuring a reduced carbon footprint by using an economic travel itinerary comprising a series of connected routes between tourist attractions that minimizes transit time. This study used a travel-route planning approach using geographic information systems to detect the shortest path, thereby solving the problems associated with time-consuming transport. Based on the results of road network analyses, optimal travel-route planning can be determined. These methods include simulated annealing (SA) and genetic algorithms (GA). We applied two algorithms in our simulation research to detect which one is an appropriate algorithm for running carbon-routing algorithms at the regional scale. SA, which is superior to GA, is considered an excellent approach to search for the optimal path to reduce carbon dioxide and high gasoline fees, thereby controlling travel time by using the shortest travel routes. OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 3291

Electric Vehicles in Logistics and Transportation: A Survey on Emerging Environmental, Strategic, and Operational Challenges

“…In addition, Liu et al [97] analyze a heterogeneous fleet version of the VRP in which the goal is to find a routing solution minimizing the carbon footprint. Similarly, Fang et al [98] try to minimize the carbon footprint generated by bird watching tourist activities throughout optimal routing design supported by geographic information systems. Table 2 summarizes some of the main decision variables, constraints, and objective functions related to the new VRP variants that emerge when considering heterogeneous fleets of ICEVs and EVs.…”