TheRoute project aims to conduct studies, research and experimentation around the challenge of automatic generation of routes for tourists and visitors of points of interest related with Tourism and Heritage considering the deep knowledge from the fields of routes, visitor’s profile and context awareness.

The project is organized in 8 Activities:

A1 – Knowledge Acquisition on general and specific Routes. This activity will cover the state of the art related to the challenge launched, also incorporating the context and the requirements definition. To this end the project will have a broad and diverse set of PhD researchers in the fields of Hospitality and Tourism, Heritage, Literature, Arts and Culture, Health, Transports, Management and Information and Communication Technologies.

A2 – System Architecture based on Ambient Intelligence. This activity will adapt a proposal of the principal investigator based in the 7 roles of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) systems and a 4-layer system architecture, in order to suit the problem of recommender systems and support to tourists.

A3 – Modeling of Points of Interest, Visitors? Profile, and Context Awareness. It is intended here to develop robust models with different levels of depth that can adequately model the points of interest, visitor or group of visitors and context.

A4 – Mobility, Health, Well-being and Accessibility in Routes. Sustainability, accessibility and contribution to public health concerns should be considered in the routes proposed to visitors. Factors such as the use of public transport, accessibility for the disabled, appropriate effort proposals to the physical conditions and health of visitors will be worked here.

A5 – Development of algorithms and programs for Route Generation. Artificial Intelligence techniques will be considered for modeling visitor and aggregation of visitors profiles, and adaptation to the context through intelligent environments principles. The use of location systems (interior and exterior) will be important to enhance the monitoring and adaptation of the generated tour.

A6 – Experimentation of TheRoute system components. The resulting components (visitor profile modeling; location; adaptation to the context, composition of routes, suitability to health issues and wellness, accessibility and mobility) will be experienced and articulated. The evaluation of the experiments will be performed.

A7 – Organization and Management of the project. This activity takes place throughout the project and aims to ensure proper coordination between the participants and the physical and financial execution of the project, serving at the same time to monitor the development and delivery of results proposed by the project.

A8 – Divulgation, Dissemination and Valorization.

For the Dissemination Strategy it is important to identify the stakeholders able to be more interested in the results of TheRoute. Here we can identify national Tourism Associations and Agencies, namely from the North Region of Portugal. Other stakeholders are enterprises involved in the area of Tourism & Heritage. Douro Azul, also partner in the project, but many other companies, from Travel Agencies, to Hotels and Restaurants are important.