TREADS: a safe route recommender using social media mining and text summarization

Abstract

This paper presents TREADS, a novel travel route recommendation system that suggests safe travel itineraries in real time by incorporating social media data resources and points of interest review summarization techniques. The system consists of an efficient route recommendation service that considers safety and user interest factors, a transportation related tweets retriever with high accuracy, and a novel text summarization module that provides summaries of location based Twitter data and Yelp reviews to enhance our route recommendation service. We demonstrate the system by utilizing crime and points of interest data in the Washington DC area. TREADS is targeted to provide safe, effective, and convenient travel strategies for commuters and tourists. Our proposed system, integrated with multiple social media resources, can greatly improve the travel experience for tourists in unfamiliar cities.