TRACE: Travel Reinforcement Recommendation Based on Location-Aware Context Extraction

As the popularity of online travel platforms increases, users tend to make ad-hoc decisions on places to visit rather than preparing the detailed tour plans in advance. Under the situation of timeliness and uncertainty of users’ demand, how to integrate real-time context into dynamic and personalized recommendations have become a key issue in travel recommender system. In this article, by integrating the users’ historical preferences and real-time context, a location-aware recommender system called TRACE ( T ravel R einforcement Recommendations Based on Location- A ware C ontext E xtraction) is proposed. It captures users’ features based on location-aware context learning model, and makes dynamic recommendations based on reinforcement learning. Specifically, this research: (1) designs a travel reinforcing recommender system based on an Actor-Critic framework, which can dynamically track the user preference shifts and optimize the recommender system performance; (2) proposes a location-aware context learning model, which aims at extracting user context from real-time location and then calculating the impacts of nearby attractions on users’ preferences; and (3) conducts both offline and online experiments. Our proposed model achieves the best performance in both of the two experiments, which demonstrates that tracking the users’ preference shifts based on real-time location is valuable for improving the recommendation results.

Dynamic Scheduling of Contextually Categorised Internet of Things Services in Fog Computing Environment

Fog computing emerged as a concept that responds to the requirements of upcoming solutions requiring optimizations primarily in the context of the following QoS parameters: latency, throughput, reliability, security, and network traffic reduction. The rapid development of local computing devices and container-based virtualization enabled the application of fog computing within the IoT environment. However, it is necessary to utilize algorithm-based service scheduling that considers the targeted QoS parameters to optimize the service performance and reach the potential of the fog computing concept. In this paper, we first describe our categorization of IoT services that affects the execution of our scheduling algorithm. Secondly, we propose our scheduling algorithm that considers the context of processing devices, user context, and service context to determine the optimal schedule for the execution of service components across the distributed fog-to-cloud environment. The conducted simulations confirmed the performance of the proposed algorithm and showcased its major contribution—dynamic scheduling, i.e., the responsiveness to the volatile QoS parameters due to changeable network conditions. Thus, we successfully demonstrated that our dynamic scheduling algorithm enhances the efficiency of service performance based on the targeted QoS criteria of the specific service scenario.

On Using Multiple Disabilities Profiles to Adapt Multimedia Documents

Currently, advanced technological hardware can offer mobile devices which fits in the hand with a capacity to consult documents at anytime and anywhere. Multiple user context constraints as well as mobile device capabilities may involve the adaptation of multimedia content. In this article, the authors propose a new graph-based method for adapting multimedia documents in complex situations. Each contextual situation could correspond to a physical handicap and therefore triggers an adaptation action using ontological reasoning. Consequently, when several contextual situations are identified, this leads to multiple disabilities and may give rise to inconsistency between triggered actions. Their method allows modeling relations between adaptation-actions to select the compatible triggerable ones. In order to evaluate the feasibility and the performance of their proposal, an experimental study has been made on some real scenarios. When tested and compared with some existing approaches, their proposal showed improvements according to various criteria.

Implementation of User Centered Design Method on e-Catalog Information System of UMKM in South Aceh Agency

The utilization of digital technology produces efficiency, effectiveness and accountability that can support the UMKM (Usaha Mikro, Kecil, Menengah) so that the Regional Government (PEMDA) in this case the Koperasi and UKM Office of South Aceh agency can contribute in providing services and education for UMKM which are expected to be able to improve productivity and profit of UMKM in their region. To using of the UCD (User Centered Design) model involves the user in the development process. This study focuses on the implementation of the use of the UCD development model after going through the evaluation process of the user context, analysis and design of solutions based on recommendations from users. Based on the evaluation results, it is known that the implementation of UCD method to the system have a good response from users.

Resolving User Conflicts in Multi-user Context-aware Home Environment

Context-awareness is an enabling technology of pervasive computing that allows applications to adapt themselves in responseto contexts (e.g. activity, location, temperature level, etc.). However, an issue of user conflicts in context-aware applicationsmay arise when multiple users want to access the same application. Our research focuses on this issue and proposes aconflict resolution approach that resolves the conflicts in context-aware home applications. The proposed approach takes intoconsideration the users’ special case contexts (e.g. illness of user) along with their priorities and preferences. The proposedapproach is also useful in cases where multiple users with multiple special cases try to access one application or service.To show the usefulness of the proposed approach, we have integrated the proposed conflict manager with the UbiREAL, asimulated context-aware home environment. The conflict manager utilizes different strategies and different approaches toresolve user conflicts according to the involved situation to suit the need of the family. The prototype evaluation shows thatthe users are satisfied with the proposed system and suggests that the use of users’ special case contexts in detecting andresolving the user conflicts is essential and necessary in the context-aware smart home environments.

A Novel Filtering Recommendation Algorithm for User Emergency Information Adoption

Emergency case data resources are widely distributed and heterogeneous. At the same time, the command of emergency field needs the cooperation of multiple departments. Therefore, it is urgent to establish an emergency analysis and mining platform, realize the sharing and collaboration of emergency data resources among multiple departments, and assist emergency command and scheduling. According to the actual situation of the current emergency, a similarity measure method (TCRD) is proposed to solve this problem by adding temporal information to reflect information adoption, which integrates user context information and temporal information. Firstly, the temporal information of historical adoption behavior is expressed as a binary coded characteristic matrix, and then the characteristic matrix is mapped into a feature vector by using restricted Boltzmann machine, and finally added to the similarity measurement formula. The improved TCRD method can measure the similarity more accurately, and further improve the quality of emergency information adoption recommendation results.

Statistical Model for Mobile User Positioning Based on Social Information

In spite of the vast set of measurements provided by current mobile networks, cellular operators have problems pinpointing problematic locations because the origin of such measurements (i.e., user location) is usually not registered. At the same time, social networks generate a huge amount of data that can be used to infer population density. In this work, a data-driven model is proposed to deduce the statistical distribution of connections, exploiting the knowledge of network layout and population density in the scenario. Due to the absence of GPS measurements, the proposed method combines data from radio connection traces stored in the network management system and geolocated posts from social networks. This information is enriched with user context information inferred from data traffic attributes. The method is tested with a large trace dataset from a live Long Term Evolution (LTE) network and a database of geotagged posts from social networks collected in real-time.

Why Are Digital Health Care Systems Still Poorly Designed, and Why Is Health Care Practice Not Asking for More? Three Paths Toward a Sustainable Digital Work Environment

Knowledge of how to design digital systems that are ergonomically sound, high in usability, and optimized for the user, context, and task has existed for some time. Despite this, there are still too many examples of new digital health care systems that are poorly designed and that could negatively affect both the work environment of health care staff and patient safety. This could be because of a gap between the theoretical knowledge of design and ergonomics and the practical implementation of this knowledge in procuring and developing digital health care systems. Furthermore, discussions of digitalization are often at a general level and risk neglecting the nature of direct interaction with the digital system. This is problematic since it is at this detailed level that work environment and patient safety issues materialize in practice. In this paper, we illustrate such issues with two scenarios concerned with contemporary electronic health care records, based on field studies in two health care settings. We argue that current methods and tools for designing and evaluating digital systems in health care must cater both to the holistic level and to the details of interaction and ergonomics. It must also be acknowledged that health care professionals are neither designers nor engineers, so expectations of them during the development of digital systems must be realistic. We suggest three paths toward a more sustainable digital work environment in health care: (1) better tools for evaluating the digital work environment in the field; (2) generic formulations of qualitative requirements related to usability and for adaptation to the user, context, and task, to be used in procurement; and (3) the introduction of digital ergonomics as an embracing concept capturing several of the ergonomic challenges (including physical, cognitive, and organizational aspects) involved in implementing and using digital systems.