• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.123-145
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• 2008

Recently, as the information communication technology develops, the discussion regarding the ubiquitous environment is occurring in diverse perspectives. Ubiquitous environment is an environment that could transfer data through networks regardless of the physical space, virtual space, time or location. In order to realize the ubiquitous environment, the Pervasive Sensing technology that enables the recognition of users' data without the border between physical and virtual space is required. In addition, the latest and diversified technologies such as Context-Awareness technology are necessary to construct the context around the user by sharing the data accessed through the Pervasive Sensing technology and linkage technology that is to prevent information loss through the wired, wireless networking and database. Especially, Pervasive Sensing technology is taken as an essential technology that enables user oriented services by recognizing the needs of the users even before the users inquire. There are lots of characteristics of ubiquitous environment through the technologies mentioned above such as ubiquity, abundance of data, mutuality, high information density, individualization and customization. Among them, information density directs the accessible amount and quality of the information and it is stored in bulk with ensured quality through Pervasive Sensing technology. Using this, in the companies, the personalized contents(or information) providing became possible for a target customer. Most of all, there are an increasing number of researches with respect to recommender systems that provide what customers need even when the customers do not explicitly ask something for their needs. Recommender systems are well renowned for its affirmative effect that enlarges the selling opportunities and reduces the searching cost of customers since it finds and provides information according to the customers' traits and preference in advance, in a commerce environment. Recommender systems have proved its usability through several methodologies and experiments conducted upon many different fields from the mid-1990s. Most of the researches related with the recommender systems until now take the products or information of internet or mobile context as its object, but there is not enough research concerned with recommending adequate store to customers in a ubiquitous environment. It is possible to track customers' behaviors in a ubiquitous environment, the same way it is implemented in an online market space even when customers are purchasing in an offline marketplace. Unlike existing internet space, in ubiquitous environment, the interest toward the stores is increasing that provides information according to the traffic line of the customers. In other words, the same product can be purchased in several different stores and the preferred store can be different from the customers by personal preference such as traffic line between stores, location, atmosphere, quality, and price. Krulwich(1997) has developed Lifestyle Finder which recommends a product and a store by using the demographical information and purchasing information generated in the internet commerce. Also, Fano(1998) has created a Shopper's Eye which is an information proving system. The information regarding the closest store from the customers' present location is shown when the customer has sent a to-buy list, Sadeh(2003) developed MyCampus that recommends appropriate information and a store in accordance with the schedule saved in a customers' mobile. Moreover, Keegan and O'Hare(2004) came up with EasiShop that provides the suitable tore information including price, after service, and accessibility after analyzing the to-buy list and the current location of customers. However, Krulwich(1997) does not indicate the characteristics of physical space based on the online commerce context and Keegan and O'Hare(2004) only provides information about store related to a product, while Fano(1998) does not fully consider the relationship between the preference toward the stores and the store itself. The most recent research by Sedah(2003), experimented on campus by suggesting recommender systems that reflect situation and preference information besides the characteristics of the physical space. Yet, there is a potential problem since the researches are based on location and preference information of customers which is connected to the invasion of privacy. The primary beginning point of controversy is an invasion of privacy and individual information in a ubiquitous environment according to researches conducted by Al-Muhtadi(2002), Beresford and Stajano(2003), and Ren(2006). Additionally, individuals want to be left anonymous to protect their own personal information, mentioned in Srivastava(2000). Therefore, in this paper, we suggest a methodology to recommend stores in U-market on the basis of ubiquitous environment not using personal information in order to protect individual information and privacy. The main idea behind our suggested methodology is based on Feature Matrices model (FM model, Shahabi and Banaei-Kashani, 2003) that uses clusters of customers' similar transaction data, which is similar to the Collaborative Filtering. However unlike Collaborative Filtering, this methodology overcomes the problems of personal information and privacy since it is not aware of the customer, exactly who they are, The methodology is compared with single trait model(vector model) such as visitor logs, while looking at the actual improvements of the recommendation when the context information is used. It is not easy to find real U-market data, so we experimented with factual data from a real department store with context information. The recommendation procedure of U-market proposed in this paper is divided into four major phases. First phase is collecting and preprocessing data for analysis of shopping patterns of customers. The traits of shopping patterns are expressed as feature matrices of N dimension. On second phase, the similar shopping patterns are grouped into clusters and the representative pattern of each cluster is derived. The distance between shopping patterns is calculated by Projected Pure Euclidean Distance (Shahabi and Banaei-Kashani, 2003). Third phase finds a representative pattern that is similar to a target customer, and at the same time, the shopping information of the customer is traced and saved dynamically. Fourth, the next store is recommended based on the physical distance between stores of representative patterns and the present location of target customer. In this research, we have evaluated the accuracy of recommendation method based on a factual data derived from a department store. There are technological difficulties of tracking on a real-time basis so we extracted purchasing related information and we added on context information on each transaction. As a result, recommendation based on FM model that applies purchasing and context information is more stable and accurate compared to that of vector model. Additionally, we could find more precise recommendation result as more shopping information is accumulated. Realistically, because of the limitation of ubiquitous environment realization, we were not able to reflect on all different kinds of context but more explicit analysis is expected to be attainable in the future after practical system is embodied.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.143-155
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• 2011

Lately electronic tagging policy for the sexual offenders was introduced in order to reduce and prevent sexual offences. However, most sexual offences against children happening these days are committed by the tagged offenders whose identities have been released. So, for the crime prevention, we need measures with which we could minimize the suffers more promptly and actively. This paper suggests a new system to relieve the sexual abuse related anxiety of the children and solve the problems that electronic bracelet has. Existing bracelets are only worn by serious criminals, and it's only for risk management and positioning, there is no way to protect the children who are the potential victims of sexual abuse and there actually happened some cases. So we suggest also letting the students(children) wear the LBS(Location Based Service) and USN(Ubiquitous Sensor Network) technology based electronic bracelets to monitor and figure out dangerous situations intelligently, so that we could prevent sexual offences against children beforehand, and while a crime is happening, we could judge the situation of the crime intelligently and take swift action to minimize the suffer. And by checking students' attendance and position, guardians could know where their children are in real time and could protect the children from not only sexual offences but also violent crimes against children like kidnapping. The overall system is like follows : RFID Tag for children monitors the approach of offenders. While an offender's RFID tag is approaching, it will transmit the situation and position as the first warning message to the control center and the guardians. When the offender is going far away, it turns to monitoring mode, and if the tag of the child or the offender is taken off or the child and offender stay at one position for 3~5 minutes or longer, then it will consider this as a dangerous situation, then transmit the emergency situations and position as the second warning message to the control center and the guardians, and ask for the dispatch of police to prevent the crime at the initial stage. The RFID module of criminals' electronic bracelets is RFID TAG, and the RFID module for the children is RFID receiver(reader), so wherever the offenders are, if an offender is at a place within 20m from a child, RFID module for children will transmit the situation every certain periods to the control center by the automatic response of the receiver. As for the positioning module, outdoors GPS or mobile communications module(CELL module)is used and UWB, WI-FI based module is used indoors. The sensor is set under the purpose of making it possible to measure the position coordinates even indoors, so that one could send his real time situation and position to the server of central control center. By using the RFID electronic roll book system of educational institutions and safety system installed at home, children's position and situation can be checked. When the child leaves for school, attendance can be checked through the electronic roll book, and when school is over the information is sent to the guardians. And using RFID access control turnstiles installed at the apartment or entrance of the house, the arrival of the children could be checked and the information is transmitted to the guardians. If the student is absent or didn't arrive at home, the information of the child is sent to the central control center from the electronic roll book or access control turnstiles, and look for the position of the child's electronic bracelet using GPS or mobile communications module, then send the information to the guardians and teacher so that they could report to the police immediately if necessary. Central management and control system is built under the purpose of monitoring dangerous situations and guardians' checking. It saves the warning and pattern data to figure out the areas with dangerous situation, and could help introduce crime prevention systems like CCTV with the highest priority. And by DB establishment personal data could be saved, the frequency of first and second warnings made, the terminal ID of the specific child and offender, warning made position, situation (like approaching, taken off of the electronic bracelet, same position for a certain time) and so on could be recorded, and the data is going to be used for preventing crimes. Even though we've already introduced electronic tagging to prevent recurrence of child sexual offences, but the crimes continuously occur. So I suggest this system to prevent crimes beforehand concerning the children's safety. If we make electronic bracelets easy to use and carry, and set the price reasonably so that many children can use, then lots of criminals could be prevented and we can protect the children easily. By preventing criminals before happening, it is going to be a helpful system for our safe life.