Hierarchical Graph Learning with Cross-Layer Information Propagation for Next Point of Interest Recommendation

With the vast quantity of GPS data that have been collected from location-based social networks, Point-of-Interest (POI) recommendation aims to predict users’ next locations by learning from their historical check-in trajectories. While Graph Neural Network (GNN)-based models have shown promising re...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Qiuhan Han, Atsushi Yoshikawa, Masayuki Yamamura
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-04-01
Series:Applied Sciences
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/9/4979
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Summary:With the vast quantity of GPS data that have been collected from location-based social networks, Point-of-Interest (POI) recommendation aims to predict users’ next locations by learning from their historical check-in trajectories. While Graph Neural Network (GNN)-based models have shown promising results in this field, they typically construct single-layer graphs that fail to capture the hierarchical nature of human mobility patterns. To address this limitation, we propose a novel Hierarchical Graph Learning (HGL) framework that models POI relationships at multiple scales. Specifically, we construct a three-level graph structure: a base-level graph capturing direct POI transitions, a region-level graph modeling area-based interactions through spatio-temporal clustering, and a global-level graph representing category-based patterns. To effectively utilize this hierarchical structure, we design a cross-layer information propagation mechanism that enables bidirectional message passing between different levels, allowing the model to capture both fine-grained POI interactions and coarse-grained mobility patterns. Compared to traditional models, our hierarchical structure improves cold-start robustness and achieves superior performance on real-world datasets. While the incorporation of multi-layer attention and clustering introduces moderate computational overhead, the cost remains acceptable for offline recommendation contexts.
ISSN:2076-3417