SYSTEMS, METHODS, AND SOFTWARE FOR ENTITY RELATIONSHIP RESOLUTION

• US 20090198678A1
• Filed: 12/22/2008
• Published: 08/06/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/21/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH (The Woodbridge Co. Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Thomson Reuters Global Resources Unlimited Company (The Woodbridge Co. Ltd.)
• Inventors: Dozier, Christopher C., Veeramachaneni, Sriharsha, Conrad, Jack G.
• Granted Patent: US 9,600,509 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/215 Improving data quality; Data cleansing, e.g. de-duplication, removing invalid entries or correcting typographical errors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/23 Updating
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2471 Distributed queries

Abstract

To facilitate access to public records, the present inventors devised, among other things, an entity resolution system. The exemplary system includes master records database of 300 million entities, which is partitioned into multiple distinct portions. The exemplary system extracts entity information from input public records and constructs one or more blocking queries against specific portions of the master records database to identify one or more sets of candidate records. Feature vectors are defined for the candidate records and machine learning techniques, such as Support Vector Machine, are used to determine which of the candidate records from the master records database match the input public records. Candidate records that match are logically associated with public records, enabling ready access via direct or indirect queries.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

means, responsive to a one or more data fields in a public record, for retrieving a set of candidate named entity records from a master named entity database based on one of a set of two or more blocking queries;

matching means for calculating similarity scores for one or more of the data fields in the public record and data fields in the candidate named entity records; and

means for determining a confidence rating for one or more of the set of similarity scores between the public record and the candidate public record into a confidence rating.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

means, responsive to the confidence rating, for determining whether to retrieve another set of candidate named entity records from the master named entity database based on another of the set of two or more blocking queries.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the other of the set of two or more blocking queries is broader in scope that the one blocking query.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of blocking queries includes:

a query for a social security number from the public record;

a query for a last name and a first name, and a city name, all extracted from the public record; and

a query for a last name and a first name, all from the public record.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the master named entity database is partitioned into a number of blocks based on corresponding hashes of a name field associated with each record in the master named entity database.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein each similarity score ranges from 0 and 1.0, wherein 0 indicates a non-match and 1.0 indicates an identical match.

7. The system of claim 1 further comprising a lookup table for determining whether one or more of the blocking queries will return a number of candidate named entity records in excess of a threshold.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein one or more of the recited means is implemented using in combination machine-executable instruction sets stored on a machine-readable magnetic, electrical, or optical medium, with the instruction sets executed using one or more processors.

9. The system of claim 4, wherein the system is implemented as a client-server architecture and one or more of the processors is a component of a web server and wherein one or more client access devices interface with the web server via a wide or local area network to request and receive public record information.

10. A method comprising:

retrieving a set of candidate named entity records from a master named entity database based on one of a set of two or more blocking queries, with each block query based on one or more data fields in a public record;

calculating similarity scores for one or more of the data fields in the public record and data fields in the candidate named entity records; and

means for determining a confidence rating for one or more of the set of similarity scores between the public record and the candidate public record into a confidence rating.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

determining whether to retrieve another set of candidate named entity records from the master named entity database based on another of the set of two or more blocking queries.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the other of the set of two or more blocking queries is broader in scope that the one blocking query.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the set of blocking queries includes:

a query for a social security number extracted from the public record;

a query for a last name and a first name, and a city name, all extracted from the public record; and

a query for a last name and a first name, all extracted from the public record.

14. The method of claim 10 wherein the master named entity database is partitioned into a number of blocks based on corresponding hashes of a name field associated with each record in the master named entity database.

15. The method of claim 10 wherein each similarity score ranges from 0 and 1.0, wherein 0 indicates a non-match and 1.0 indicates an identical match.

16. The method of claim 10 further comprising:

using a lookup table to determine whether the one of the blocking queries will return a number of candidate named entity records in excess of a threshold.