Micro-geographic aggregation system

• US 10,580,025 B2
• Filed: 09/27/2018
• Issued: 03/03/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 11/15/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Experian Information Solutions Incorporated (Experian plc)
• Original Assignee: Experian Information Solutions Incorporated (Experian plc)
• Inventors: Hickman, Andrew John, Tsang, Alan, Tao, Yaqi, Pan, Shengjun
• Primary Examiner(s): Yesildag, Mehmet
• Application Number:
  US16/144,230
• Publication Number:
  US 20190095939A1
• Time in Patent Office: 523 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0205 Location or geographical consideration

Abstract

The present disclosure describes systems and methods for automatically rolling-up data associated with one or more geographic units, such as ZIP+4 codes, such that the rollup comprises a minimum number of households to protect anonymity and ensure compliance with privacy regulations, while preserving variance of the underlying data associated with the geographic regions. Data attributes may include demographic data, socio-economic data, lifestyle segmentation, psychographic data, behavioral data, credit data, and other data. The rollup process may involve identifying one or more geographic units with a number of households below a minimum or threshold amount, applying filters to find candidate geographic units for rollup, scoring candidate geographic units to select best pairings for rollup, and repeating until the rollup group has at least the minimum number of households. The process may make trades off between granularity (e.g., number of households), proximity, and similarity of data attributes associated with each geographic unit.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of identifying one or more geographic units to combine with at least one target geographic unit for display on a graphical user interface, the method comprising:

under control of a computing device configured with specific computer- executable instructions;

receiving at least one indication associated with the at least one target geographic unit and a minimum threshold of households in an aggregated group of households;

causing display of a map within the graphical user interface, the map depicting a geographic area including the at least one target geographic unit based on the at least one indication;

identifying a plurality of candidate geographic units within a geographic distance of the at least one target geographic unit;

applying one or more filter criteria to the plurality of candidate geographic units to remove those candidate geographic units which do not satisfy the filter criteria to generate a plurality of remaining candidate geographic units;

determining, for each remaining candidate geographic unit of the plurality of remaining geographic units after application of the one or more filter criteria, a score based at least in part on similarity of household data attributes associated with each remaining candidate geographic unit and the at least one target geographic unit;

selecting a first candidate geographic unit from the plurality of remaining candidate geographic units for rollup aggregation with the at least one target geographic unit into a rollup group based on the determined scores;

aggregating the first candidate geographic unit with the target geographic unit into the rollup group; and

in response to determining that a combined number of households associated with the rollup group is not below the minimum threshold, updating the map to display each of the geographic units of the rollup group, wherein the updated map includes visual indications of relative scores of each of the geographic units of the rollup group.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the household data attributes include one or more socio-economic and/or lifestyle segment attributes.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the socio- economic attributes include an average asset value per household within the respective geographic unit.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the lifestyle segment attribute is a segment code.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein each candidate geographic unit is a ZIP+4 code.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or more filter criteria further are received from a requesting entity.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein the one or more filter criteria are received from the requesting entity via a web user interface, and wherein the web user interface provides one or more input fields enabling the requesting entity to configure custom filter criteria for the rollup group.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining the score for each remaining candidate geographic unit further comprises:

identifying one or more target attributes on which to analyze the similarity of the household data attributes associated with each remaining candidate geographic unit to the target geographic unit;

calculating, for each remaining candidate geographic unit, a weighted similarity of the remaining candidate geographic unit to the target geographic unit based on a comparison of the target attributes; and

determining the score based at least in part on the weighted similarity.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the weighted similarity is calculated based at least in part on a calculated geographic distance between the remaining candidate geographic unit and the target geographic unit.

10. A computer system for identifying one or more geographic units to combine with at least one target geographic unit for display on a graphical user interface, the computer system comprising:

an electronic data store configured to at least store geographic data associated with each of a plurality of geographic units; and

a computing system comprising one or more hardware computing devices, said computing system in communication with the electronic data store and configured to at least;

receive at least one indication associated with the at least one target geographic unit and a minimum threshold of households in an aggregated group of households;

cause display of a map within the graphical user interface, the map depicting a geographic area including the at least one target geographic unit based on the at least one indication;

identify a plurality of candidate geographic units within a geographic distance of the at least one target geographic unit;

apply one or more filter criteria to the plurality of candidate geographic units to remove candidate geographic units which do not satisfy the filter criteria to generate a plurality of remaining candidate geographic units;

determine, for each remaining candidate geographic unit of the plurality of remaining geographic units after application of the filter criteria, a score based at least in part on similarity of household data attributes associated with each remaining candidate geographic unit and at least one the target geographic unit;

select a first candidate geographic unit from the plurality of remaining candidate geographic units for rollup aggregation with the at least one target geographic unit into a rollup group based on the determined scores;

aggregate the first candidate geographic unit with the target geographic unit into the rollup group; and

in response to determining that a combined number of households associated with the rollup group is not below a minimum threshold, update the map to display each of the geographic units of the rollup group, wherein the updated map includes visual indications of relative scores of each of the geographic units of the rollup group.

11. The computer system of claim 10, wherein each candidate geographic unit is a ZIP+4 code.

12. Non-transitory physical computer storage comprising computer-executable instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a hardware processor, are configured to perform operations to identify one or more geographic units to combine with at least one target geographic unit for display on a graphical user interface, the operations comprising:

receiving at least one indication associated with the at least one target geographic unit and a minimum threshold of households in an aggregated group of households;

causing display of a map within the graphical user interface, the map depicting a geographic area including the at least one target geographic unit based on the at least one indication;

identifying a plurality of candidate geographic units within a geographic distance of the at least one target geographic unit;

applying filter criteria to the plurality of candidate geographic units to remove candidate geographic units which do not satisfy the filter criteria to generate a plurality of remaining candidate geographic units;

determining, for each remaining candidate geographic unit of the plurality of remaining geographic units after application of the one or more filter criteria, a score based at least in part on similarity of household data attributes associated with each remaining candidate geographic unit and the at least one target geographic unit;

selecting a first candidate geographic unit from the plurality of remaining candidate geographic units for rollup aggregation with the at least one target geographic unit into a rollup group based on the determined scores;

aggregating the first candidate geographic unit with the target geographic unit into the rollup group; and

responsive to determining that the combined number of households associated with the rollup group is not below a minimum threshold, updating the map to display each of the geographic units of the rollup group, wherein the updated map includes visual indications of relative scores of each of the geographic units of the rollup group.

13. The non-transitory physical computer storage of claim of claim 12, wherein the household data attributes include one or more socio-economic and/or lifestyle segment attributes.

14. The non-transitory physical computer storage of claim of claim 12, wherein each candidate geographic unit is a ZIP+4 code.