Eliciting cities points of interest from people movements and suggesting effective itineraries

Abstract

 When a person visits an unknown large city having multiple interesting locations, it is not so easy for him to find one location that is lively and convenient to visit in a given time-frame. To overcome such a problem, this paper proposes to make use of two technologies: smartphones, equipped with sensors for reading GPS coordinates; and multi-agent systems, providing assistance to users and gathering collective knowledge. Data collected by means of devices are analysed and organised in such a way to find locations that could be of immediate interest to people. Proposed agents gather opinions from several users, in terms of scores quantifying the level of satisfaction on visiting some place on a given time-frame. While gathering such an opinion, a solution is put into place to preserve user privacy (his location). Suggestions are made to potentially interested users by selecting for them locations according to closeness and satisfaction scores. In this approach, interesting locations emerge from the analysis of data gathered, hence scores and suggestions can be available for any large city in any place, provided that enough people hand data to the system. Moreover, such places are found dynamically according to people behaviour and preferences.