Keynotes and Speakers for ITx 2018
Southern Institute of Technology
Oras Baker received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Malaya in 2009.
He is currently the Head of School of Computing and the Programme Manager for Postgraduate studies and master of IT at the Southern Institute of Technology, Invercargill, New Zealand.
He is actively involved in industrial consultancy and collaboration. He has vast teaching experience due to having worked in a number of educational institutions locally and abroad.
His research interests include Artificial Intelligence, Web Intelligence, Virtual and Augmented reality techniques, Data Mining, IOT, and energy efficiency.
The Southland tourism industry is flourishing and has benefited from a wide range of markets. Increasing visitor numbers, coupled with welcoming host communities, has driven tourism to become an important industry in Southland region’s economy.
However, the number of tourists and travel information existing on the Internet can be overwhelming for many visitors. Because of this amount of information, tourists can spend a huge amount of time trying to decide what to visit, when, and what other tourist activities are available.
The overall aim of this research is to find out if an intelligent application recommender system is feasible within the Southland tourism industry. In order to improve the tourist experience, the recommender system suggests personalised information to the potential tourist.
The main methodology used in creating the recommender system will be based on Cycling and Winding approaches for top N recommendations. This will also include an enhanced rating prediction for the group of users by providing a dynamic list of options versus a static list, using supplied information such as: age group, number of visitors and Geo locations, and many other options. In other words, the system attempts to recommend very suitable activities for users relevant to their profile.
The proposed system is capable of modifying the initial information from the user’s preferences by studying the interaction between the user and the system than offering them more adjusted recommendations based on activities selected and user feedback.
The suggested intelligent web system uses the MVC model as it allows multiple views of the same model by decoupling the view from the model and it will allow the system to respond to the user without changing the presentation of the information. The suggested model will manage the data and the rules of the application based on the user profile.