Innovative Approaches and Applications for Sustainable Rural Development : 8th International Conference, Haicta 2017, Chania, Crete, Greece, September 21-24, 2017, Selected Papers

This book presents selected papers from the 8th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Agriculture, Food and Environment (HAICTA 2017) which examine sustainable rural development in the context of environmental, economic, and the socio-cultural dimension. This book raises awareness of the importance of sustainable management in agriculture using examples of actual industry cases, sustainable management practices, new forms of rural cooperation and entrepreneurship.

Prof. Alexandros Theodoridis is Assistant Professor in Animal Production Economics and Applied Statistics, at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His main research interests include agricultural economics, agricultural policy, animal production economics, statistical analyses and evaluation of experimental data and design of farm management surveys. Dr. Theodoridis has participated in several scientific projects funded by Greek governmental bodies, European Union and private companies and organizations and he has published more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed journal and conferences in various fields of Agricultural Economics and Applied Statistics.

Dr. Ragkos Athanasios is an Agricultural Economist currently employed as a Researcher at the Agricultural Economics Research Institute of the Greek Agricultural Organization “Demeter”.He has taught several courses in Greek Universities and Technological Institutions. He has participated in 22 research projects (one of which as Coordinator) and has published more than 55 papers in peer-reviewed journals and Conference Proceedings. His research fields include the economics of agriculturaland animal production, environmental economics, the multifunctional character of agriculture and extensive farming systems, project appraisal and sustainable rural development. He is experienced in designing interdisciplinary approaches regarding the above-mentioned research fields by maintaining close collaboration with scientists of relevant fields.

Prof. Michail Salampasis is professor of Internet Technologies at the department of Informatics at the TEI of Thessaloniki.  He was also a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Vienna University of Technology. His main research interests are in applied and interdisciplinary studies in information science, information seeking in large professional search systems, patent search, distributed information retrieval and search systems evaluation. He is author or co-author of over 80 publications in refereed journals and international conferences.