Real-time signs-based recommendation system for non-ritual destinations during Hajj and Umrah using GIS and data mining

There are various non-ritual activities (such as going back and forth to accommodation, restaurants, shopping malls, medical centers, pharmacies, telecommunication outlets, money teller machines, etc.), that are carried out by the pilgrims during Hajj and Umrah where in they essentially require guidance. The movement in these trips is mostly individual or in very small groups. The management of such movements is not controlled or guided by government authorities. However, the results of such movement have direct impact on the
congestion of roads and the safety of pilgrims. Furthermore, the time and effort consumed in conducting these non-ritual activities directly affect the safety and health of pilgrims as well as their concentration and dedication in the ritual activities. Also, the pilgrims are coming from different countries with many languages and ethnicities. Even though some of the related work offered approaches and systems identifying and tracking pilgrims’ movement
in real time but there is a considerable lack of proposed or developed applications that offer location-based services to the pilgrims in the form of a real-time recommendation system for either ritual or no-ritual destinations during Hajj and Umrah. Therefore, the system proposed in this paper aims to address and fill this gap.
The proposed real-time Signs-based Recommendation system (SiR) integrates Data Mining and spatial data in GIS applications to offer spatial data mining results that infer users’ patterns based on their profile and spatial data usage. The SiR system is composed of five components: (a) signs-based interface as a smartphone application, (b) GIS Application, (c) sets of Smart Geographic installed in the physical world Objects (SGO), (d) Data Mining Application, and (e) remote Inference Engine. The signs-based interface is a smart phone application that allows the user to navigate and to show the results in order to overcome the language barrier and be a language free system. The SiR system utilizes the concept of smart geographic object to allow for both remote and proximity access by the pilgrims.