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Twenty-minute neighbourhoods highlight the importance of well-connected and mixed-used neighbourhoods and communities with proximate access to employment, essential services, public transport, and open spaces. Shorter distances together with re-prioritised public spaces encourage more active transport choices, resulting in public health benefits and reduced environmental pollution. Higher liveability brought about by mixed-use developments enables people to have equitable access to local facilities, amenities, and employment opportunities, promoting vibrancy, social cohesion, and intergenerational connections. The attributes of 20-minute neighbourhoods also combine to create places, that are acknowledged as friendly for all ages, address changing needs across the life course, and provide better support for the ageing population. Furthermore, there are indications that 20-minute neighbourhoods may be more resilient against many of the negative impacts of stringent public health protocols such as those implemented in periods of lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, we evaluate and compare planning policies and practices aimed at establishing 20-minute neighbourhoods in Melbourne (Australia) and Scotland (the UK). Using case studies, we discuss similarities and differences involved in using place-based approaches of 20-minute neighbourhoods to address 21st-century challenges in key areas of health and wellbeing, equity, environmental sustainability, and community resilience.

In the near future, the year 2050, agricultural production should expand to fulfill the needs of approximately 9.7 billion inhabitants. Such an objective should be harmonized with social, economic, and environmental sustainability aspects to maintain safe food production and food security worldwide. For more than a year, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised and is still strongly disrupting the agro-livestock production sector, similar to several other economic sectors. In this sector, the relationships between suppliers, producers, and consumers should always continue to maintain the activity of the production chain, which are impaired by social distancing decisions taken following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, a global cross-sectional survey (translated into four languages: Arabic, English, French, and Spanish) was shared with people belonging to the agricultural sector to identify: (1) the role of the agricultural information and communication technologies (ICTs) in agro-livestock farming systems sustainability during the period of COVID-19 pandemic, (2) the need for such technologies in the agricultural sector, and (3) the factors that affect the use of such technologies. The results showed that the most frequently used agricultural ICTs were social media (Facebook and/or WhatsApp; 27.3%) and online platforms and Internet services (26.3%), whereas robotic vehicles and/or drones (6.6%) were less frequently used. During the emergence of the pandemic, the major reasons impacting agro-livestock farming systems’ sustainability were social distancing (30.0%), shortage of labor (17.7%), maintaining precision farm management (14.8%), product marketing (14.2%), access production inputs (7.2%), and others (16.1%). Applying agricultural ICTs solved many obstacles related to the production process, such as maintaining precision farm management (25.6%), product marketing (23.6%), and access production inputs (16.1%). The subgroup analyses of the results considering the degree of country advancement, size of agribusinesses, and role/position of respondents in the farm highlighted the importance of supporting the use, availability, and awareness of agricultural ICTs at least for some groups of people such as those belong to developing countries, laborers, and small-scale agri-business holders. This cross-sectional study highlights the urgent need to turn to and to expand the use of new agricultural ICTs to meet the growing demand for food production in the world and to ensure the resilience and sustainability of farming systems, specifically under unexpected and extreme conditions.

In response to the challenges faced by tourism managers in devising effective pricing strategies to overcome the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to make a valuable contribution to the existing literature on tourism management and marketing. Specifically, we investigate the pricing strategies that tourists are most likely to prefer in the aftermath of the pandemic. To achieve this, we conducted semi-structured interviews with a sample size of experienced tourists in Egypt. Our findings reveal that tourists exhibit a strong inclination towards hedonic and bundling pricing strategies. This suggests that tourism managers should prioritize the incorporation of these strategies into their post-pandemic business plans. However, it is crucial for managers to carefully consider tourists’ behavioral responses to dynamic and pay-what-you-want pricing strategies, as these are influenced by various constraints that necessitate careful attention. Furthermore, our study highlights potential negative consequences associated with the implementation of the dual-pricing strategy following the pandemic. This strategy has the potential to compromise tourists’ intentions to utilize certain services, thereby leading to unfavorable behavioral outcomes for tourism destinations. The implications of this study are of practical significance for tourism managers seeking to design more effective pricing strategies to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the post-pandemic recovery period. By understanding tourists’ preferences and considering the potential drawbacks associated with certain pricing strategies, managers can make informed decisions that promote the sustainable and successful revival of the tourism industry. Moreover, our study employed the checkpoints method, which allowed us to identify respondents’ priorities for the pricing strategies during the crisis, further enhancing the validity and reliability of our findings.

This study examined the impacts of perceived Airbnb risks, i.e., performance, financial, physical, social, time, and psychological risks on tourists’ intention to use Airbnb. The study also explored the moderating effect of the fear of COVID-19 on the relationship between perceived Airbnb risks and the tourist’s intention to use Airbnb. The data was collected from 248 customers of Airbnb using a survey approach. The data were analyzed utilizing the Smart PLS V.4. The PLS-SEM results revealed that Airbnb (physical, psychological, time, performance, financial and social risks) had a significant negative effect on the intention to use Airbnb. On the other side, the fear of COVID-19 acted as a moderator between Airbnb’s physical, psychological, and social risks and the intention to use Airbnb, indicating that customers tend to tolerate time and performance risks when having a high level of fear of COVID-19 and prefer to use Airbnb regardless of them. This shift in customer behavior towards customers’ intention to use Airbnb in light of the fear of COVID-19 gives Airbnb an edge that should be exploited via remedying other risks. It was suggested that the Airbnb hosts’ awareness of the importance of Airbnb in the context of tourism in Egypt should be enhanced. Additionally, a legislative framework should govern Airbnb transactions to secure tourists in dealing with Airbnb hosts. Professionalism in providing Airbnb services should also be adopted. Future studies in the context of the current subject could conduct multi-group analyses according to different types of Airbnb accommodation and use a larger sample size.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the world focus on providing effective and fair online learning systems. As a consequence, this paper proposed a new intelligent, fair assessment of online examinations for virtual and remotely controlled laboratory experiments running through Laboratory Learning Systems. The main idea is to provide students with an environment similar to being physically present in a Laboratory while conducting practical experiments and exams and detecting cheating with high accuracy at a minimal cost. Therefore, an intelligent assessment module is designed to detect cheating students by analyzing their mouse dynamics using Artificial Intelligence. The mouse interaction behavior method was chosen because it does not require any additional resources, such as a camera and eye tribe tracker, to detect cheating. Various AI algorithms, such as KNN, SVC, Random Forest, Logistic Regression, XGBoost, and LightGBM have been used to classify student mouse behavior to detect cheating, and many metrics are used to evaluate their performance. Moreover, experiments have been conducted on students answering online laboratory experimentations while cheating and when answering the exams honestly. Experimental results indicate that the LightGBM AI algorithm achieves the best cheat detection results up to an accuracy of 90%, precision of 88%, and degree of separation of 95%.

Travel decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic might be substantially influenced by destination-based attributes, in particular, health safety measures at airports. In the current study, we aimed to assess the effects of the perceived importance of safety measures at the Sharm El Sheikh airport on the intention of international passengers to revisit the destination, which might reflect their behavioral control for traveling to other tourism destinations. A total of 954 international travelers were asked to fill out a survey to reveal their travel risk perceptions, the importance of airport safety measures, and their future intentions to revisit the destination, and the data were integrated in an SEM model. The results showed that passengers with low-risk perceptions and highly perceived importance of logistic and sanitization procedures, as well as traveler- and staff-related safety measures, were more likely to exhibit greater intentions to revisit the city and lower intentions to cancel or change future travel plans to other touristic regions. Health safety at airports should be stressed in future strategic plans by governmental authorities and stakeholder activities to mitigate the psychological barriers of tourists.

The long-lasting pandemic has disrupted face–to–face education and has forced higher education institutions to adopt digital learning management systems, albeit many public universities in developing counties could not properly undertake this shift and adopted either free interactive platforms (e.g., zoom) or social network applications (SNAs) (e.g., Facebook and WhatsApp) due to their limited resources and infrastructure. Despite that the COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the value of e-learning, some concerns were raised about the quality of learning outcomes and academic performance of students, using these SNAs for learning, compared to traditional face–to–face education. Therefore, examining the impact of SNAs as an e-learning platform on the academic performance students is inevitable, notwithstanding that this has not been sufficiently examined by researchers amid COVID-19. For this purpose, an online questionnaire was distributed to students via research teams’ personal networks, i.e., university lecturers at various public universities in Egypt. They were asked to distribute the survey link with their undergraduates via email or WhatsApp. A total of 600 valid questionnaires was obtained from students in nine public colleges that deliver tourism and hotel management courses in Egypt and adopted SNAs for e-learning at least one semester amid COVID-19. Unlike the results of previous arguments and research, the results of the structural equation modelling using AMOS showed a positive, significant impact of SNAs as e-learning platforms on students’ academic performance. The results have several implications for higher education policymakers, educators, and scholars, especially in relation to the future of use social media applications in higher education, particularly in developing countries’ contexts.

COVID-19 set off a problem for businesses due to an unbalanced utilization of buildings, services, and utilities. Thus, some countries reduced the length of the quarantine period and returned to natural life earlier than necessary to allow the economy and businesses to survive. This research aims to review the standards of off-street car parking (OSCP) for higher education institutes (HEIs) and examine the possibility of the transformation of the car parking buildings. Secondary and descriptive research approaches have been applied, and OSCP standards of different countries have been reviewed to identify the challenges facing the transformation design process in terms of standard dimensions, finishing materials, building envelope, illumination, ventilation, and technical installations. OSCP of Kingdom University (KU) in Bahrain has been analysed for proposing the rescheduling of space planning and accommodating a certain number of in-person attendance students as per the three situations of the COVID-19 pandemic. The author concluded that OSCP spaces of the HEIs are the most feasible building for design transformation in terms of rescheduling the space planning, but it is not very achievable in terms of affordability due to much adaptation being required and additional technical installations. At least 68% of the area of OSCP is used for circulation and services. Future studies seeking the feasibility of smart rotary car parking to save such a huge area of car circulation in the traditional OSCP building are recommended.