From patrick.schouller@inria.fr Mon Nov 29 15:16 MET 1999
To: (Suppression de la liste des destinataires)
From: Patrick Schouller 
Subject: Acteur italien recherche partenaire pour le prochain appel IST
  dans le domaine du tourisme

Call 1: User Preference based Trip Planning
Aim: We want to realise a system that, on the basis of the user preferences (
e.g.: panoramic places, live music, ruins, nineteenth-century-cultural assets
etc.) and any necessity/constrains ( e.g.: number of the travel days,
economical assets, places where one has to stop etc.) will find within an
information repository (structured as a database or not structured as a set of
HTML pages) the elements that better satisfy the user preferences (maximising
some objective functions) and will organise the trip using different means of
communication (plane, train and if necessary bus).
The system will be made so to guarantee to be adequately scalable and
adaptable
to different information repository for the retrieval of the elements to
visit.
These pre-requirements are necessary because we want to use three different
information repository: the former containing the Tour Operator offers, the
second concerning the Central Access Point (CAP) database of
InTouriSME-Enjoyeurope and the latter concerning a regional tourist server
database and especially the district of Naples.
In particular as regards the net defined through the InTouriSME-Enjoyeurope
projects together with the technological infra-structure (based on JAVA/JINI
technology) for the co-operation of software application that will be made
shortly available through the FETISH project, it will be immediately available
within the CAP the Trip Planning service which is able to operate in a
distribute way using the offered service from every single regional server.
The optimisation functionality used for the selection of the various entity
foresee the possibility of interacting with the user in order to improve the
quality of the results produced by the retrieval mechanism using advanced
artificial intelligence and combinatorial optimisation techniques. These
techniques are also used, for example in the case of the use on the tour
operator information repository, so that one can find the trip or the
different
trips (between those proposed by the tour operator) at minimal distance from
that proposed by the user.
As concerning the organisation of the journey the system will propose some
transfers using different communications mean (multimodal path) optimising the
transfers in function of different parameters (time, costs, number of changes
etc.) provided by the user.

Innovation Aspects: data mining on heterogeneous information repositories
basis
through the optimisation (MIN/MAX) of multiple functions objective unified to
the techniques of AI, Fuzzy logic and Soft-Computing; definition of complex
mathematical models for the transfers planning problem description and
formalisation; combinatorial optimisation for transfers planning in a
multimodal way; experimentation of state of the art technologies for the
co-operation of software application ( EJB, CORBA, JINI).

POSSIBLE PARTNERSHIP:
Tour operator (possible TUI from DE),
CRS provider (AMADEUS, or eventually GALILEO)
Technological for IA, fuzzy logic and combinatorial optimisation (CRMPA)
Local Regional Server present in InTouriSME project (CRETA and CORSICA);
Vienna
Local Public Corporation ( district Na)

Call 3: trips Combination

We want to realise a system which will be able to manage the different tourist
offers suggested by various tour operator in a structured form (through the
predisposition of a multimedia data base) and to supply intelligent search
functionality of the proposals according to the tourist's preferences/needs.
The system will be also provided with a farm of software agents by means of
will be implemented a mechanism of self maintenance of the database finding
information of tourist interest through the Internet network. Moreover, using
techniques of artificial intelligence and soft-computing the system carries
out
a self-auditing on the quality of the supplied information and on the
fulfilment of the user's requests. The information provided by the
self-auditing functionality will be used to setup, in a suitable way, the
agents in order to find peculiar information requested by the users but not
available inside the database.
In particular the system is addressed to the travel/service agencies and the
tour operators and it can be used whether locally (at the agency) or through a
usual Internet site. Using techniques of artificial intelligence,
soft-computing and optimisation the user's preferences are collected together,
a user profile is made and finally the information available in the data base
are searched between these that better satisfy the user preferences,
eventually
arranging different solutions of the same tour operator, more TO or
proposing a
new tour.

Innovative aspects : data mining on heterogeneous informative basis through
the
optimisation (min/max) of multiple objective-functions unified with the use of
IA techniques, fuzzy logic and soft-computing; software agents,
experimentation
of state of the art technologies for the cooperation of software application
(EJB, CORBA, JINI).

Possible parternship:
Service/travel agencies of al least two countries
Tour operators of al least two countries
Technological for combinatorial optimisation, IA and Soft-Computing
(CRMPA+University)

POUR TOUTE INFORMATION COMPLEMENTAIRE

salerno@unisa.it




Ministère de l'Economie, des Finances et de l'Industrie
Secrétariat d'Etat à l'Industrie
Direction générale de l'Industrie, des Technologies de l'Information et de la
Poste
Service des Technologies et de la Société de l'Information
Sous Direction des Programmes et de la Prospective
le BERVIL - 12 rue Villiot  - 75572 PARIS CEDEX 12
Téléphone : 01 53 44 94 25 - Télécopie 01 53 44 98 51
HTTP://www.evariste.org/actu/schouller