Technique for creating, directing, storing, and automatically delivering a message to an intended recipient based on climatic conditions

• US 20060142944A1
• Filed: 12/23/2004
• Published: 06/29/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 12/23/2004
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Orange S.A.
• Original Assignee: Orange S.A.
• Inventors: Orwant, Jonathan Lee
• Application Number:
  US11/021,288
• Publication Number:
  US 20060142944A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 702/3
• CPC Class Codes: G01W 1/10 Devices for predicting weather conditions computers per se G06; display devices G09

Abstract

A method and apparatus for identifying likely future locations of a person and transmitting notifications to the person about climatic conditions. More specifically, it relates to a technique for consulting sources of information about the object'"'"'s motion in combination with weather forecasts to determine whether to transmit a message to the person with an alert about the forecast.

Claims

1. A method for delivering personalized weather forecasts to a person, comprising:

obtaining information about a current location of the person;

obtaining information about likely future locations of the person;

obtaining weather forecasts corresponding to those locations;

ranking weather forecasts for delivery according to their importance to the person; and

delivering the forecasts to the person.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the current location of the user is automatically determined by a position determining unit.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein likely future locations are automatically obtained from a schedule.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the weather forecasts are retrieved automatically.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the weather forecasts are determined at periodic time intervals.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the weather forecasts are determined for intermediate positions between fixed locations.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein weather forecasts are selected for transmission based on a calculated importance of the forecast.

8. A method for processing information pertaining to the schedule of a person, comprising:

retrieving the schedule files from a server;

parsing and tokenizing the schedule files;

finding addresses within the events;

geocoding the addresses.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the schedule files are parsed using Internet standard 2445.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the success or failure of a geocoding service is used to determine whether a string constitutes a valid address.

11. A method for computing a likelihood of a person'"'"'s arrival at specific locations, comprising:

estimating probabilities for each location; and

storing the probabilities locally.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein said probabilities are estimated according to geolocalized distances between locations when locations occur at unknown times.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein said probabilities are estimated according to an inverse of time separating locations when locations occur at known times.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein said probabilities are estimated by searching for neighbor locations within an iteratively shrinking radius.

15. A method for estimating probabilities of a person'"'"'s arrival at specific locations, comprising:

computing chronologically consistent paths;

obtaining probability vectors each assigned to a consistent path;

obtaining overall path probabilities; and

deducing location probabilities from probability vectors and overall path probabilities.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein a recursive function is used to build up a set of chronological paths from a list of chronological locations.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the probability vectors are obtained by cascading successive probabilities from one location to the next.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein the location probabilities are obtained by weighting locations by the probability of each path they occur in.

19. A method for ranking an importance of weather forecasts for a person, comprising:

measuring the clemency of the weather forecast;

quantifying a change in weather between locations; and

integrating a probability of the person'"'"'s arrival at the location.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the clemency is calculated according to configurable parameters.

21. The method of claim 19, wherein the change in weather between locations is calculated according to a configurable distance metric.

22. The method of claim 19, wherein the importance is calculated as a function of the probability of the person'"'"'s arrival at the location, the change in weather from the current location, and the likelihood-weighted clemency of the forecast.