System and method for integrating and displaying travel advices gathered from a plurality of reliable sources

• US 7,818,117 B2
• Filed: 06/20/2007
• Issued: 10/19/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/20/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amadeus (Amadeus Global Travel Distribution S.A.)
• Original Assignee: Amadeus (Amadeus Global Travel Distribution S.A.)
• Inventors: Nath, Gourabmoy
• Primary Examiner(s): Hellner; Mark
• Assistant Examiner(s): Algahaim; Helal A
• Application Number:
  US11/765,633
• Publication Number:
  US 20080319649A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,217 Days
• Field of Search: 701/205
• US Class Current: 701/201
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/14 Travel agencies

Abstract

A computerized travel system and a method for providing advices and warnings per travel destination to end-users. The system has a client service module for receiving queries from the end-users, and delivering to them merged reports of travel advices and warnings for the queried travel destinations. A download and parsing module parses travel raw documents, downloaded from a plurality of online reliable travel sources, into cleaned raw documents sharing a common formatting structure including sections, sections headers and paragraphs. An algorithmic module integrates the cleaned raw documents into the merged reports of travel advices and warnings per travel destination. The integration is performed from a base document chosen among all the relevant clean raw documents for each queried travel destination. Comparable sections are determined on the basis of contents of their section headers and semantically close paragraphs are placed next to each other in corresponding sections of merged reports.

Claims

1. A computerized travel system for providing advices and warnings per travel destination to end-users of the travel system, comprising:

a client service module for receiving a query from an end user and delivering a merged report of travel advices and warnings for a queried travel destination;

a download and parsing module for parsing individual travel advice documents downloaded from a plurality of online reliable travel sources into cleaned documents sharing a common formatting structure including sections, sections headers and paragraphs and wherein, for each individual travel advice, tags are defined and text portions are extracted between the tags;

an algorithmic module for integrating the cleaned documents into a merged report of travel advices and warnings per travel destination wherein the integration of the cleaned documents into the merged report performed by;

i) choosing, among all the clean documents, a base document from which integration is performed;

ii) creating sections in the merged report using the section headers of the base document as section headers of the merged report;

iii) for each section of the base document extracting paragraphs from the base document and inserting said paragraphs extracted from the base document in the merged report under the section header corresponding to the section header of the section of the base document;

iv) comparing section headers of the cleaned documents other than the base document with the section headers of the base document to determine similarity values;

v) defining a similarity value threshold and defining pairs of comparable sections each made of a section of a cleaned document other than the base document and of a section of the base document and for which the similarity value is above the similarity value threshold;

vi) for each pair of comparable sections;

comparing the paragraphs of the section of the cleaned document other than the base document with the paragraphs of the section of the base document to determine similarity scores;

inserting the paragraphs of the section of the cleaned document other than the base document in the merged report, next to the paragraphs of the section of the base document returning the best similarity score;

a relational database for storing and retrieving all travel information and controls to operate the travel system including the cleaned documents and the merged report;

an administrative module to manage and control the building and delivery of the merged report to the end-user of the travel system.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein comparable sections are determined on the basis of contents of their section headers.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein semantically close paragraphs of comparable sections are placed next to each other in the corresponding sections of the merged reports.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein semantic similarities of clean raw document paragraphs are evaluated on the basis of a reduced set of content-bearing keywords per paragraph and wherein similarity scores are computed versus the corresponding base paragraphs.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the insertion of the paragraphs in sections of the merged reports is performed as a function of their similarity scores.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the algorithmic module further filters contents of any of the travel advice documents for the purpose of printing or displaying only part of the travel advices and warnings.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein filtering is performed on the basis of semantic filters including filtering of recommendations and events.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein comparable sections are determined on the basis of contents of their section headers.

15. The system of claim 1, wherein semantically close paragraphs of comparable sections are placed next to each other in the corresponding sections of the merged reports.

16. The system of claim 2, wherein semantically close paragraphs of comparable sections are placed next to each other in the corresponding sections of the merged reports.

19. The system of claim 1, wherein the base document is a document supplied by an embassy of a country of citizenship of the end user.

8. A method in a travel system of integrating advices and warnings from a plurality of individual travel advice documents, comprising:

receiving, via a computer, a query for advices and warnings for a travel destination from and end-user;

getting, via a computer, individual travel advice documents including text portions from a database of the travel system;

providing a common formatting structure including sections, sections headers and paragraphs;

parsing, via a computer, the individual travel advice documents, to obtain cleaned documents sharing the common formatting structure, said parsing step comprising for each individual travel advice document, the definition of tags and the extraction of text portions between the tags;

integrating, via a computer, the cleaned documents into a merged report of travel advices and warnings for the travel destination, the integrating step including the further step of;

i) choosing, among all the cleaned documents, a base document from which integration is performed;

ii) creating sections in the merged report using the section headers of the base document as section headers of the merged report;

iii) for each section of the base document, extracting paragraphs from the base document and inserting said paragraphs extracted from the base document in the merged report under the section header corresponding to the section header of the section of the base document;

iv) comparing section headers of the cleaned documents other than the base document with the section headers of the base document to determine similarity values;

v) defining a similarity value threshold and defining pairs of comparable sections each made of a section of a cleaned document other than the base document and of a section of the base document and for which the similarity value is above the similarity value threshold;

vi) for each pair of comparable sections;

comparing the paragraphs of the section of the cleaned document other than the base document with the paragraphs of the section of the base document to determine similarity scores;

inserting the paragraphs of the section of the cleaned document other than the base document in the merged report, next to the paragraphs of the section of the base document returning the best similarity score;

delivering, via a computer, the merged report of travel advices and warnings for the travel destination to the end-user of the travel system.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the step of getting individual travel advice documents from the database is replaced by the steps of:

if documents are not available or outdated in the database,

building or updating a master table of reliable data sources of travel advices and warning;

downloading the raw documents from the reliable data sources listed in the master table.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the integrating step includes the further steps of:

with respect to the base document used to produce the merged report,

determining which sections of the cleaned raw documents are comparable on the basis of their section headers;

comparing each paragraph contents within comparable sections, further comprising;

identifying content-bearing keywords in current paragraph of base document;

identifying content-bearing keywords in compared paragraph of cleaned raw document;

identifying vector spaces for evaluating paragraph similarities;

measuring paragraph similarities to obtain a similarity score;

inserting the compared paragraph into the merged report as a function of its similarity score.

11. The method according to claim 8, wherein contents of any of the travel advice documents is further filtered for the purpose of printing or displaying only part of the travel advices and warnings.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the filtering step includes filtering on the basis of semantic filters including filtering of recommendations and events.

13. A computer program stored on a computer readable storage medium, comprising computer readable code causing at least one computer to perform the method of integrating travel advices and warnings according to claim 8.

17. The method, at claim 9, wherein contents of any of the travel advice documents is further filtered for the purpose of printing or displaying only part of the travel advices and warnings.

18. The method, at claim 10, wherein contents of any of the travel advice documents is further filtered for the purpose of printing or displaying only part of the travel advices and warnings.

20. The method of claim 8, wherein the base document is a document supplied by an embassy of a country of citizenship of the end user.