Incorporating Weather Updates for Public Transportation Users of Recommendation Systems

This work presents a system for augmenting the functionality of Yelp-like recommendation sites by enabling users to search for places bounded by travel-time when using public transportation, and modifying recommendations based on updated weather conditions. Using public transport, although is cheaper and efficient, entails that only fixed places of boarding/exiting may be used which, in turn, implies walking to (from) a particular location from (to) a given station. Given the impact of the weather on the mood and activities, preferences for a certain type of services may need to be dynamically adjusted based on the current weather or the near-future forecast, modulo travel-routes to preferred locations. In this work, we develop a model to predict a user's preferred mode of transport (car, or public transit) from their old check-ins and incorporate the weather context into the recommendation process. We use event-based modeling to control the extent of walking depending on user-defined tolerance information and live weather conditions. We implemented a web application (both desktop and mobile platforms), utilizing existing tools such as Google Maps Direction API and Open Weather Map API for retrieving real-time information.