Dynamic Programming Approach for a Concierge Service Problem in Location-Based Services

The concierge service model is a new value-added service in the Location-Based Services (LBS) market, designed to provide users with integrated information on transportation and Points-Of-Interest (POI) to support smarter decision regarding route choice. The Concierge Service Problem is to find a route and location of POIs between an origin and a destination with minimum total cost including the purchasing and travel cost. To respond to a user’s query for such a service, a solution algorithm should be both efficient and accurate enough to maintain serviceability and commerciality. The dynamic programming (DP) methods are developed to find the exact solutions for given problems. DP can lessen the complexity of the problem and suggested adaptive method reduces the response time significantly. For a case that multiple optional routes are preferable, a method that finds second or third optimal solution is also introduced. These solution methods are implemented using the Chicago and Seoul metropolitan network. Test results show those dynamic programming methods can solve the large size problems within minutes.