Holistic tourism-crime modelling

Tourism is a major source of income for any city, however, many cities with highly attractive features do not achieve the high tourism rates that they warrant. This is mainly due to the non-manipulation of negative factors by the decision making bodies. A comprehensive impact analysis is necessary to understand the system macroscopically in order to make correct decisions microscopically. Expert opinion and common-sense were used to identify the factors involved and their impacts. A structured model is created to picture the inter-relationships among the impacts. Qualitative mathematics, which is based on common-sense reasoning, is then used to analyse the inter-relationships to see the effect on tourism to the city. This is to highlight how much of information can be extracted using common-sense. Durban, South Africa is the city that the model was developed on. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.