LARS: A Location-Aware Recommender System

Abstract—This paper proposes LARS, a location-aware recommender system that uses location-based ratings to produce recommendations. Traditional recommender systems do not consider spatial properties of users nor items; LARS, on the other hand, supports a taxonomy of three novel classes of locationbased ratings, namely, spatial ratings for non-spatial items, nonspatial ratings for spatial items, and spatial ratings for spatial items. LARS exploits user rating locations through user partitioning, a technique that influences recommendations with ratings spatially close to querying users in a manner that maximizes system scalability while not sacrificing recommendation quality. LARS exploits item locations using travel penalty, a technique that favors recommendation candidates closer in travel distance to querying users in a way that avoids exhaustive access to all spatial items. LARS can apply these techniques separately, or together, depending on the type of location-based rating ava...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: ICDE
• Authors: Justin J. Levandoski, Mohamed Sarwat, Ahmed Eldawy, Mohamed F. Mokbel
• Keywords: Database, ICDE 2012, Recommender System, Spatial Properties, System Scalability