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Geotechnologies have a long tradition in several areas of society and research. The recent development of the ‘Internet of Everything’ (IoE) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies opened several doors to the contribution of tourism. Emergent technologies contributions to tourism and planning such as web mapping, augmented reality (AR), crowdsourcing and crowdsensing are relatively recent, and there is a lack of research around their potential for Creative Tourism enhancement. For example, combining web mapping with AR or storytelling can be an excellent contribution to operators, planners and tourists. For research purposes, new opportunities are open, particularly by integrating community-shared data. It is well known for the popularity of social networks, the exponential growth of photo sharing, but few studies have been implemented to understand their contribution to research. This chapter focuses on emerging geotechnologies concerning cultural mapping, Creative Tourism and sustainability. Since it is a new growing niche, more research is needed to develop and understand the potential of new approaches. Besides traditional techniques such as quantitative (e.g. surveys) and qualitative ones (e.g. interviews, focus groups and world café), it revises the role of geotechnologies on Creative Tourism development and growing activities. Results from case studies from Europe are analysed.

Although there are not data to attest to the growth of various Creative Tourism experiences worldwide, the expectation of their increase is consistent with the strength of the nowadays markets and the strategies and changes needed to sustain this growth at the twenty-first century. So, it will be relevant to follow the new trends, changes and challenges that will shape the future path of Creative Tourism. In the context of the European Union, economic prosperity and well-being should respond to twin digital and green transitions that should prepare society to mitigate problems that arise from pandemic situations, such as the recent COVID-19. How do we follow new and future experiences, and how can institutions be positioned without jeopardising the massification of this segment? As with cultural tourism, this segment of creative initiatives can and should develop ways to avoid these possible mass derivations and adjust the preservation of its sustainability in the future. What strategy needs to be adapted so that future risks of vulgarisation will be avoided even within the possible new trends? What will be the role of the Southern European countries? This final chapter envisages promoting critical thinking about the role of Creative Tourism for local and regional development. The discussion focuses on how to prevent massification and how to respond to new challenges and saturated formulas and in accordance with the digital area of the twenty-first century. Also, it promotes some solutions based on short-term strategies to be outlined and on a TIN (Think, Integrate and Network) model, which can be replicated in many countries in Europe and in the rest of the world.

Floods and landslide threats were addressed under the Frontline process in the city of Limbe, Southwestern Cameroon. The purpose of this paper is to present actions undertaken through building local community resilience to floods which are a major threat in the city, with impacts on the local community ranging from death to complete destruction of services and livelihoods.

The actions carried out were informed by the GNDR-supported Frontline survey conducted in 2015 in which the Lower Motowoh community rated floods as an important threat. A series of reflection and learning sessions with the community members was carried out to better understand the problem. Scoping studies on the causes and extent of floods along river Njengele were undertaken by GEADIRR and the community team.

The findings of this paper indicated that the main problem resulted from river channel blockage caused by indiscriminate dumping of refuse into the waterway and sediment deposition from upstream. Further reflection and action planning led to preparatory meetings between GEADIRR and ten community leaders. The unanimous action adopted was to dredge the river. Dredging was carried out in late April and early May of 2016 using a hired bulldozer.

Follow-up shows that after many years of misery from floods, often associated with the loss of loved ones and property, about 500 community residents who benefited from the action did not go through this dreadful ordeal again during the rains of 2016 and 2017. People are currently rebuilding on the reclaimed land which was previously abandoned due to flooding.

Current challenges include changing the mindset of community members about the adverse effects of indiscriminate dumping of household waste into the waterway. It was also a big challenge convincing some members of the community who felt that floods are a natural phenomenon unstoppable by man.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative picture of the state of the art of the literature on digitalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as an enabler for their internationalisation process and as a comprehensive view of the specific domains impacted by digital technologies as well as their repercussions on the international outreach.

A systematic review which leverages a descriptive analysis of extant literature and an axial coding technique has been conducted to shed light on the current knowledge and to identify primary research areas and future research lines.

The research indicates that digitalisation impacts the internationalisation of SMEs in three specific domains: (1) internationalisation through the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) technologies and e-commerce platforms; (2) international expansion through the digitalisation of value chain activities and (3) international outreach through knowledge acquisition on digital platforms.

The value of this study is threefold. First, the authors attempt to systematically review the literature on SMEs digitalisation and internationalisation and provide a holistic perspective on the intertwining of these two research streams. Second, the authors propose a novel conceptualisation on the dimensions of SMEs digitalisation as enablers to internationalisation. Third, the authors put forward promising future lines of research.

1. Digitalisation represents a pivotal strategy that allows companies to build new strategic capabilities and is a propeller for SMEs internationalisation.

2. Through e-commerce, SMEs could compete at the same level of multinational companies but enduring lower costs of expansion.

3. Digital platforms allow SMEs to enhance the learning processes about international markets through an immediate access to relevant information.

4. Digital entrepreneurship has enabled SMEs to develop new configurations of value chain activities, evolving their business model or reaching new markets.

5. SMEs are changing the “business as usual” paradigm offering digital tools to build modular architectures that are scalable and agile in their evolution ability.

Digitalisation represents a pivotal strategy that allows companies to build new strategic capabilities and is a propeller for SMEs internationalisation.

Through e-commerce, SMEs could compete at the same level of multinational companies but enduring lower costs of expansion.

Digital platforms allow SMEs to enhance the learning processes about international markets through an immediate access to relevant information.

Digital entrepreneurship has enabled SMEs to develop new configurations of value chain activities, evolving their business model or reaching new markets.

SMEs are changing the “business as usual” paradigm offering digital tools to build modular architectures that are scalable and agile in their evolution ability.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the state-of-the art in a systematic way, identifying the main research groups and their related topics. The types of studies found are fundamental for understanding the application of artificial neural networks (ANNs) in cemented soils and the potential for using the technique, as well as the feasibility of extrapolation to new geotechnical or civil and environmental engineering segments.

This work is characterized as being bibliometric and systematic research of an exploratory perspective of state-of-the-art. It also persuades the qualitative and quantitative data analysis of cemented soil improvement, biocemented or microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) soil improvement by prediction/modeling by ANN. This study sought to compile and study the state of the art of the topic which possibilities to have a critical view about the theme. To do so, two main databases were analyzed: Scopus and Web of Science. Systematic review techniques, as well as bibliometric indicators, were implemented.

This paper connected the network between the achievements of the researches and illustrated the main application of ANNs in soil improvement prediction, specifically on cemented-based soils and biocemented soils (e.g. MICP technique). Also, as a bibliometric and systematic review, this work could achieve the key points in the absence of researches involving soil-ANN, and it provided the understanding of the lack of exploratory studies to be approached in the near future.

Because of the research topic the article suggested other applications of ANNs in geotechnical engineering, such as other tests not related to geomechanical resistance such as unconfined compression test test and triaxial test.

This article systematically and critically presents some interesting points in the direction of future research, such as the non-approach to the use of ANNs in biocementation processes, such as MICP.

Regarding the social environment, the paper brings approaches on methods that somehow mitigate the computational use, or elements necessary for geotechnical improvement of the soil, thereby optimizing the same consequently.

Neural networks have been studied for a long time in engineering, but the current computational power has increased the implementation for several engineering applications. Besides that, soil cementation is a widespread technique and its prediction modes often require high computational strength, such parameters can be mitigated with the use of ANNs, because artificial intelligence seeks learning from the implementation of the data set, reducing computational cost and increasing accuracy.

This study aimed to determine factors that increase resilience and cause smallholder farmers to adapt better to climate change and vulnerability.

In this study, the authors used the vulnerability to resilience model and binary logit model to analyse the factors influencing household decisions to adapt.

Households with increased access to climate information through extension services were likely to have better adaptation abilities. It was also shown that younger farmers were likely to adapt to climate change given their flexibility to adopt new techniques and their access and use of modern information and technology. Larger households were found to have higher probability of adapting as most adaptation strategies are labour intensive. Household’s possession of livestock and access to credit significantly enhanced adaptation. However, households with higher farm income have lesser incentives to adapt to because their current farming practices might already be optimum.

Given that most of the smallholder farmers are vulnerable, such as women-headed households and the elderly, who are labour constrained, there is need for research and development of labour saving technologies to increase resilience to climate change and vulnerability.

These findings underscore the importance of enabling farmer access to information and better technologies which enable them to increase adaptive capacity and resilience.