Project: Sights on Recommendation Engine

The objective of the SIREN project is to develop a personalized location-based tourist recommendation service for smartphones and a dedicated website which can be easily deployed and customized for cities around the world. The work is based on technology already developed for the city of Tallinn by Mindstone, Apprise and ELIKO Competence Centre in Electronics-, Info- and Communication Technologies. The existing demonstrator is available at http://tallinn.sightsplanner.com/_x000D__x000D_The system creates plans for visiting interesting objects and events on the trip, based on a user’s personal preference and trust profile. A tourist can specify his/her location, time of the visit and her preferences about different types of places, objects and events that are of interest. Based on that profile, the recommendation engine prompts the user with relevant venues/sites/events using advanced probabilistic matching algorithms, suggesting a score of "relevance" to the user. Venues/sites/events that the user probably likes have a higher score and vice versa. The objects and events are organized into an itinerary based on their location and time using optimizing search algorithms. Finally the schedule and the trip route will be presented to the user. The tourist has an option to modify the suggested objects and to create a more suitable itinerary._x000D__x000D_Such personalized recommendations make the SIREN solution useful for tourists with very different interests and can therefore be used by both leisure and business travellers._x000D__x000D_A crucial aspect of the project is automating the place/event data import and conversion, using both available structured databases, semi-structured information available on existing tourism websites and additional search by different engines like Google, Bing and others. We will develop and use configurable data converters, web harvesters and a rule engine as an underlying technology. The goal is to make it easy to port the system to different cities by minimising the amount of manual work required to obtain high quality data on places/events of interest._x000D__x000D_We will develop both the universal web-based user interface and the specialized mobile apps for Android platforms. Integration with the social media systems like Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter including automated user profile calculation from the personal data available on the social media systems is also an important part of the agenda._x000D__x000D_The CO research and development areas proposed in the project are focused on:_x000D_1. creating scalable and robust versions of the already developed pilot versions of the existing technologies and algorithms, and_x000D_2. developing additional required technologies and functionalities for mobile platforms and intelligent social media connectivity._x000D__x000D_After the successful completion of the project the first targeted cities are Stockholm, Sweden (9 million nights spent by tourists in 2009 according to Eurostat) and Helsinki, Finland (4 million nights)._x000D__x000D_The project Ps have the following roles:_x000D_1. Mindstone will concentrate on the scalable core technologies, namely interest matching and recommendation algorithms; as well as automated systems for obtaining place/event data and updating the Tallinn test-site with the new SIREN functionality;_x000D_2. Apprise will concentrate on the usability aspects, developing the mobile versions and assisting Mindstone in updating the Tallinn test-site with the new SIREN functionality;_x000D_3. Seasus will work both on the intelligent social media integration and experimental setup for Malta: identifying touristic location/event databases and websites in Malta that can be harvested and checking the data quality, researching and preparing content for venues, experimenting with and validating the developed systems using Malta location/event data, and gathering user perception/feedback, as well as finding. The above work will focus specifically on the experimental deployment and demonstration of the system in Malta together with the other Ps.

Acronym SIREN (Reference Number: 6554)
Duration 02/01/2012 - 30/06/2014
Project Topic The objective of the SIREN project is to develop a personalized tourism recommendation service which can be easily deployed and customized for cities around the world using harvesting, aggregation and categorization algorithms.
Network Eurostars
Call Eurostars Cut-Off 6

Project partner

Number Name Role Country
3 Apprise LLC Partner Estonia
3 Mindstone LLC Coordinator Estonia
3 Seasus Ltd Partner Malta