In 2002 Wouter Souffriau obtained his MSc degree in Engineering, option Information and Communication Technology, from KaHo Sint-Lieven, Gent.
In 2003 he obtained a Master degree in Artificial Intelligence, option Engineering and Computer Science, from the K.U.Leuven.
After working two years for Siemens as a project engineer, he started working on a PhD at the Centre for Industrial Management, Department of Mechanics, K.U.Leuven.
At this moment he is working on a research project for KaHo Sint-Lieven, Gent.
Nowadays, a large number of Mobile Tourist Guides (MTG) is available:
e.g. for visiting a region or a city, for making a bicycle trip, for visiting a museum...
These guides provide information to the user.
They give an overview of interesting locations (art galleries, historical buildings, shops, ...)
and guide the tourist from one location to the next.
Almost all of these guides use one or more standard routes for visiting points of interest
or they let the user make a selection.
These guides do not offer a personal selection to the user.
This is the core of our research.
Based on a user profile, location, available time and budget,
we offer a personal selection of points of interests and a route between these.
The user can make changes to the proposed tour by adding or deleting points.
We also consider possible extensions such as opening hours, planning for multiple days, arc routing, ...
Another important factor to consider is the robustness of the planning:
the proposed plan should be dynamically adapted when a users spends more or less time at a certain location.
Check out our CityTripPl@nner for Leuven.
This webapplication allows you to plan a citytrip in Leuven for multiple days.
The planned trip is customised to the user's context and takes opening hours of attractions into account.
The final trip can be printed or downloaded to a mobile device.
The content is provided by the tourist office of Leuven.
At this moment we are expanding the project to other historic cities in Flandres, namely Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Mechelen.
A. Garcia, P. Vansteenwegen, O. Arbelaitz, W. Souffriau, M. T. Liniza,
Integrating Public Transportation in Personalised Electronic Tourist Guides,
Solving Multi-Constrained Team Orienteering Problems to Generate Tourist Routes,
submitted to Computers & Operations Research, special issue on Transport Scheduling, under review
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
The Planning of Cycle Trips in the Province of East Flanders,
submitted to Omega, The International Journal of Management Science, under review
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
The City Trip Planner: an Expert System for Tourists, submitted to Expert Systems with Applications, under review
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, D. Van Oudheusden,
The Orienteering Problem: a Survey, submitted to European Journal of Operational Research, under review
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, K. Sörensen,
The Traveling Salesperson Problem with Hotel Selection, submitted to Journal of the Operational Research Society, under review
A. Garcia, P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, M. T. Liniza, O. Arbelaitz,
Solving Multi-Constrained Team Orienteering Problems to Generate Tourist Routes,
submitted to Discrete Optimization, under review
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
The Multi-Constraint Team Orienteering Problem with Multiple Time Windows,
submitted to TRISTAN 7, under review
Awards and recognition
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
A Variable Neighbourhood Descent Metaheuristic for Planning Container Transshipments in a Train Terminal,
in Proceedings of 8th EU/MEeting on Metaheuristics in the Service Industry, ISBN 978-3-00-022976-3, pp. 60-64,
Stuttgart, Germany, October 4-5, 2007, Best Student Paper Award
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
An Automated Tourist Decision Support System for the City of Leuven,
in Proceedings of ORBEL2009, Leuven, Belgium, February 5-6, 2009, ORTEC excellence in industry award runner-up
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
A Path Relinking Approach for the Team Orienteering Problem,
accepted for Computers & Operations Research, special issue on Metaheuristics for Logistics and Vehicle Routing
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
Iterated Local Search for the Team Orienteering Problem with Time Windows,
Computers & Operations Research, 36, 3281-3290, 2009
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
A Guided Local Search Metaheuristic for the Team Orienteering Problem,
European Journal of Operational Research, 196 (1), 118-127, 2009
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, J. Vertommen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
A Personalized Tourist Trip Design Algorithm for Mobile Tourist Guides,
Applied Artificial Intelligence, 22 (10), 964-985, 2008
Book chapters
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, D. Van Oudheusden,
A Detailed Analysis of Two Metaheuristics for the Team Orienteering Problem,
Engineering Stochastic Local Search Algorithms (Stützle, T., Birattari, M., and Hoos, H., eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5752, Springer Berlin, 110-114, 2009
W. Souffriau, J. Maervoet, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
A Mobile Tourist Decision Support System for Small Footprint Devices,
in Bio-Inspired Systems: Computational and Ambient Intelligence, proceedings of 10th International Work-Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (IWANN2009), Special Session on Advances in AI models adaptable to mobile devices, ISBN 978-3-642-02477-1, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5517, pp. 1248-1255, Salamanca, Spain, June 10-12, 2009
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
A Variable Neighbourhood Descent Metaheuristic for Planning Crane Operations in a Train Terminal,
in Metaheuristics in the Service Industry (M. Geiger, W. Habenicht, M. Sevaux, K. Sörensen, eds.), ISBN 978-3-642-00938-9,
Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, pp. 15-31, Springer Verlag, 2009
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
Metaheuristics for Tourist Trip Planning,
in Metaheuristics in the Service Industry (M. Geiger, W. Habenicht, M. Sevaux, K. Sörensen, eds.), ISBN 978-3-642-00938-9
Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, pp. 83-98, Springer Verlag, 2009
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
Automated Parameterisation of a Metaheuristic for the Orienteering Problem,
in Adaptive and Multilevel Metaheuristics (C. Cotta, M. Sevaux, and K. Sörensen, eds.), ISBN 978-3-540-79437-0, pp. 255-269,
Studies in Computational Intelligence, Springer Verlag, 2008
Papers at international conferences and symposia, published in full in proceedings
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, K. Sörensen,
The Mobile Mapping Van Problem: a Matheuristic for Capacitated Arc Routing with Soft Time Windows and Depot Selection,
accepted for the 13th IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing, INCOM '09, Matheuristics in Production and Logistics session,
V.A. Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences , Moscow, Russia, June 3-5, 2009
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
Solving the Aircraft Weight and Balance Problem by Exact and Heuristic Algorithms,
in Proceedings of ELA Doctorate Workshop, Grainau, Germany, June 25-27, 2008
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
A Variable Neighbourhood Descent Metaheuristic for Planning Container Transshipments in a Train Terminal,
in Proceedings of 8th EU/MEeting on Metaheuristics in the Service Industry, ISBN 978-3-00-022976-3, pp. 60-64,
Stuttgart, Germany, October 4-5, 2007, Best Student Paper Award
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
Multi-level Metaheuristics for the Orienteering Problem,
7th EU/MEeting on Adaptive, Self-Adaptive, and Multi-Level Metaheuristics, pp. 62-66,
Malaga, Spain, November 16-17, 2006
Meeting abstracts, presented at international conferences and symposia
J. Maervoet, W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
Tourist Decision Support for Mobile Navigation Systems: a Demonstration, BNAIC09, Eindhoven, October 29-30, 2009, pp. 393-394
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, J. Vertommen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
A Personalized Tourist Trip Design Algorithm for mobile Tourist Guides, B-paper, BNAIC09, Eindhoven, October 29-30, 2009, pp. 371
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, A. Garcia,
Personalized Tourist Guide: Multi-Constraint Team Orienteering Problem with Time Windows,
in Proceedings of ORBEL2009, Leuven, Belgium, February 5-6, 2009
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
An Automated Tourist Decision Support System for the City of Leuven,
in Proceedings of ORBEL2009, Leuven, Belgium, February 5-6, 2009, ORTEC excellence in industry award runner-up
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, K. Sörensen,
Solving the Mobile Mapping Van Problem: A Hybrid Metaheuristic for Capacitated Arc Routing with Soft Time Windows,
in Proceedings of EU/MEeting 2008, Metaheuristics for Logistics and Vehicle Routing,
University of Technology of Troyes, France, October 23-24, 2008
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, G. Vanden Berghe, D. Van Oudheusden,
A Greedy Randomised Adaptive Search Procedure for the Team Orienteering Problem,
in Proceedings of EU/MEeting 2008, Metaheuristics for Logistics and Vehicle Routing,
University of Technology of Troyes, France, October 23-24, 2008
K. Vangheluwe, W. Souffriau, K. Verbeeck, P. De Causmaecker,
Dynamic Scheduling of Multi-media Streams in Home Automation Systems, Demo paper,
in Proceedings of International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 08), pp. 1683-1684,
Estoril, Portugal, May 12-16, 2008
W. Souffriau, P. Demeester, G. Vanden Berghe, P. De Causmaecker,
The Aircraft Weight and Balance Problem,
in Proceedings of ORBEL 22, pp. 44-45
Royal Military Academy, Brussels, Belgium, January 16-18, 2008
P. Vansteenwegen, W. Souffriau, D. Van Oudheusden,
Personalized Mobile Tourist Guide: Guided Local Search for the Team Orienteering Problem,
in Proceedings of MIC 2007: The Seventh Metaheuristics International Conference,
Montreal, Canada, June 25-29, 2007
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, D. Van Oudheusden,
Calculating Touristic Travel Routes: a Case Study,
in Proceedings of ORBEL 21, pp. 26-27,
Luxembourg, January 18-19, 2007
P. De Causmaecker, A. Dhooge, W. Souffriau, K. Vangheluwe,
An Ontology for Dynamic Resource Scheduling in a Distributed Environment,
in Proceedings of ORBEL 21, pp. 39-40,
Luxembourg, January 18-19, 2007
W. Souffriau, P. Vansteenwegen, D. Van Oudheusden,
Developing an Electronic Tourist Guide: the automated Planning of Touristic Trips,
ORBEL 20,
Ghent, Belgium, January 19-20, 2006