A context-aware personalized travel recommendation system based on geotagged social media data mining

The proliferation of digital cameras and the growing practice of online photo sharing using social media sites such as Flickr have resulted in huge volumes of geotagged photos available on the Web. Based on users' traveling preferences elicited from their travel experiences exposed on social media sites by sharing geotagged photos, we propose a new method for recommending tourist locations that are relevant to users (i.e., personalization) in the given context (i.e., context awareness). We obtain user-specific travel preferences from his/her travel history in one city and use these to recommend tourist locations in another city. Our technique is illustrated on a sample of publicly available Flickr dataset containing photos taken in various cities of China. Results show that our context-aware personalized method is able to predict tourists' preferences in a new or unknown city more precisely and generate better recommendations compared to other state-of-the-art landmark recommendation methods.     

Geophysical characteristics of Wadi Hanifah water system, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Integrated geophysical techniques including resistivity image, vertical electrical sounding (VES), and seismic refraction have been conducted to investigate the Wadi Hanifah water system. The groundwater in Wadi Hanifah has problems caused by the high volumes of sewage water percolating into the ground. The combination of VES, resistivity image, and seismic refraction has made a valuable contribution to the identification of the interface between the contaminated and fresh water in Wadi Hanifah area. The contaminated groundwater has lower resistivity values than fresh groundwater due to the higher concentration of ions which reduces the resistivity. Resistivity image and sounding in this area clearly identified the nature of the lithological depth and proved useful at identifying water-bearing zones. Fresh groundwater was found in the study area at a depth of 100 m within the fractured limestone. Water-bearing zones occur in two aquifers, shallow contaminated water at 10 m depth in alluvial deposits and the deeper fresh water aquifer at a depth of about 100 m in fractured limestone. The interface between the contaminated water (sanitary water) and fresh water marked out horizontally at 100 m distance from the main channel and vertically at 20 m depth.     

Interacting modified holographic dark energy in Kaluza-Klein universe

The interaction of modified holographic dark energy and dark matter with varying G in flat Kaluza Klein universe is considered. Further, we take infrared cutoff scale L as future event horizon. In this scenario, equations of state parameter as well as evolution are explored. We also check the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics. It is interesting to mention here that our results show consistency with the present observations.     

The GEF/UNDP/IMO Malacca Straits Demonstration Project: Sources of Pollution

The Straits of Malacca is subjected to a great variety of environmental stresses due to its strategic location as a major international shipping lane and the concentration of agriculture, industry and urbanisation which predominate on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. This paper gives an overview of the study conducted in the Malacca Straits as part of the GEF/UNDP/IMO Regional Programme on the Prevention and Management of Marine Pollution in the East Asian Seas, in particular pertaining to the identification of land and sea-based sources of pollution in Malaysia which contributes to the pollution load in the Straits, as well as the assessment of the relative contribution of each source.     

Analysis of gravimagnetic anomalies by horizontal gradients

A simple technique for the interpretation of gravimagnetic anomalies by a numerical differentiation is presented. The ratio of horizontal gradient to the observed field was used for the location of the origin and depth to the causative body. This technique was tested by using fundamental expressions due to sphere, horizontal cylinder and vertical fault models and field data over a spherical body. It has been found that the depth to the centre of the body can be determined accurately by this technique.     

Contribution de la gravimétrie à l'étude de la structure du bassin de Tadla (Maroc) : Implications hydrogéologiques

This study is based on the analysis and the interpretation of the gravity data of the Tadla basin. Its purpose is to increase the knowledge of this basin structure. A residual anomaly map was first calculated from the Bouguer anomaly data witch are strongly affected by a regional gradient. The computed map provides information on the ground density variation but it does not bring enough of new elements. Data filtering allows us to emphasize the structures affecting the basin. We chose the horizontal gradient coupled to the upward continuation techniques that permit to highlight news structures and to give information on their dip. The elaborated structural map of the study area constitutes a useful document for rationalizing the future groundwater exploration in the Tadla basin. To cite this article: A. Najine et al., C. R. Geoscience 338 (2006).     

Site dependent and spatially varying response spectra

The goal of this study is to provide a stochastic method to investigate the effects of the randomness of soil properties due to their natural spatial variability on the response spectra spatial variation at sites with varying conditions. For this purpose, Monte Carlo Simulations are used to include the variability of both incident ground motion and soil parameters in the response spectra by mean of an appropriate coherency loss function and a site-dependent transfer function, respectively. The approach is built on the assumption of vertical propagation of SH type waves in soil strata with uncertain parameters. The response spectra are obtained by numerical integration of the governing equation of a single-degree-of-freedom(SDOF) system under non-stationary site-dependent and spatially varying ground motion accelerations simulated with non-uniform spectral densities and coherency loss functions. Numerical examples showed that randomness of soil properties significantly affects the amplitudes of the response spectra, indicating that as the heterogeneity induced by the randomness of the parameters of the medium increases, the spectral ordinates attenuate.     

Conceptualization of the hydrogeological system of some sedimentary aquifers in Savelugu–Nanton and surrounding areas,Northern Ghana

Groundwater resources play a pivotal role in the rural water delivery system in Ghana. The hydrogeological system of Middle Voltaian terrain was simulated using available data on hydraulic heads and boundary conditions. The objective was to characterize the general groundwater flow pattern and provide local estimates of the distribution of hydraulic conductivity and recharge fields. The results suggest a predominant NE–SW flow direction, which ties in with the general regional structural trend and indicates that the hydrogeological conditions of the rocks are controlled by structural entities created in the wake of fracturing and/or weathering of the rocks whose primary permeabilities are considerably reduced because of high compaction and low‐grade metamorphism. Calibrated hydraulic conductivities range between 1.90 and 10.81 m/d. The spatial distribution appears to reflect the intensity of fracturing and/or weathering of the rock and the proportion of the clay fraction of the weathered zone. Vertical groundwater recharge has been estimated to range between 0.3% and 4.1% of the annual rainfall. This recharge rate is quite low and reflects the imperviousness of the thick overburden because of high clay content in some places and high compaction in others. Despite this apparently low recharge rate, groundwater resources potential in the area appear to be high, and increased abstraction from existing abstraction wells by up to 50% does not appear to register significant effects on groundwater budgets at the simulated recharge rates. This suggests that the well yields are much lower than the potential of the aquifer system. The apparently low yields might be associated with poor well development and the choice of inappropriate well completion materials. This study recommends a monitoring system to be developed for a much more regional groundwater flow simulation under transient conditions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the potential of Bartlett Lewis rectangular pulse models for simulating rainfall in Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract

The applicability of two versions of the Bartlett Lewis rectangular pulse model, the original and the modified model, is discussed for describing the temporal and spatial variation of rainfall patterns observed at 15 raingauge stations in Peninsular Malaysia over the period 1971–2008; 17 different sets of moment combinations are fitted to these models based on the generalized method of moments approach. The common statistics included in all sets are the mean, variance, lag-1 autocorrelation and the probability of dry based on the hourly rainfall data. The analysis was carried out on hourly rainfall data from all 15 stations for all months of the year. Two stations, Petaling Jaya and Kemaman, located on the west and east coasts of the Peninsula, respectively, are considered for illustration of the results, taking the months of July and November, which correspond to the driest and wettest months, corresponding to the southwest monsoon (May–August) and northeast monsoon (November–February), respectively. The best moment combination found for the illustrative results is based on the common statistics, as well as the mean and variance based on 24-h aggregated rainfall data, the inclusion of which successfully improved the model performance; the errors were significantly reduced. It was also found that the performance of the fitted models based on the mean absolute deviate error varies according to the type of Bartlett Lewis model applied: errors are much smaller for the fitted model based on the modified model as compared to the original model. In addition, the fitted statistics: mean, lag-1 autocorrelation and probability of dry are quite well fitted for several aggregated time scales; however, the variances are underestimated in both models for all aggregated time scales, particularly in the case of the original model. The results of extreme value analysis indicate that the modified model failed to reproduce the annual hourly and daily rainfall extremes satisfactorily.

Editor D. Koutsoyiannis; Associate editor C. Onof

Citation Hanaish, I.S., Ibrahim, K., and Jemain, A.A., 2013. On the potential of Bartlett Lewis rectangular pulse models for simulating rainfall in Peninsular Malaysia. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 58 (8), 1690–1703.