Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and intelligent data analysis can help in reducing carbon and water footprints of rail infrastructure construction projects. The goal is to improve the railway construction processes with regard to their environmental impact, mainly in those aspects related to climate change such as carbon and water footprints. Based on a set of 27 indicators of every task in the construction process, a comprehensive compilation of basic information was performed, where the main project units and their sub-tasks were reviewed and analyzed. Afterwards, focus was on analyzing the transformation from environmental impact to carbon and water footprints, by means of the development of a consolidated evaluation methodology. A tool is being developed based on data mining and computational intelligence approaches. It will allow knowledge-based alternative project units scheduling, conditioned to previously selected specific footprint values and environmental indicators. This decision support system (DSS), based on multi-criteria and multi-objective intelligent optimization algorithms, will help to reduce carbon and water footprints of rail infrastructure construction projects by around 10% and 5%, respectively. Tests are going to be performed on two real high speed railway construction projects. That way, a global search procedure provides an analysis of the best alternatives in the scheduling and execution of the project units and their environmental impact offering a front of solutions displaying different trade-off amongst several ‘footprints’. Results will allow the development of a series of environmental impact indicators, which will support rail infrastructure construction companies becoming more sustainable and efficient by minimizing their environmental impact.

The enhancement of cultural heritage for tourism can greatly benefit from the opportunities offered by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), promoting greater interaction and integration between all stakeholders and service providers. In recent years, ICT applications and platforms have tended to provide a platform to translate the strategic goals and performance metrics of cultural heritage tourism into comprehensive services tailored to stakeholders’ needs by participating stakeholders. A successful co-designed platform integrates explicit services—requiring specialized software tools—and implicit services, facilitating evaluation processes. This adaptability ensures continuous improvement and alignment with evolving strategies and business objectives. As part of the European project, the development of the TExTOUR open ICT platform marks a significant advancement in leveraging technology within cultural tourism. It exemplifies the creation of a sustainable and adaptable framework, co-designed specifically to support and amplify the strategic objectives of cultural heritage tourism. This approach not only fosters better engagement and management within the sector but also sets a new standard for innovation in cultural tourism practices.

Rural areas in Europe represent outstanding examples of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CNH) that could be used as a valuable asset for social and economic development. This article describes the process for developing a monitoring platform based on Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and implemented in six rural areas around Europe. The goal of this monitoring system is to provide evidence of the role of CNH in rural areas as a driver for sustainable growth. Several data collection procedures are described, including regular, non-regular, and co-monitoring. To combine the selected cross-thematic and multi-scale KPIs, weights have been assigned to indicators, according to the knowledge provided by domain experts and using group decision-making techniques. A detailed description of the dashboards developed for the monitoring platform, and all the information gathered is included. Several dashboards have been designed focusing on KPI values and their evolution.