Command center system and method

• US 9,563,605 B1
• Filed: 05/29/2012
• Issued: 02/07/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 05/29/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Target Brands Inc. (Target Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Target Brands Inc. (Target Corporation)
• Inventors: Bement, Tanea Marie, Wheeler, Bray Alexander, Mielke, Ann Michelle, Bergquist, Aaron M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Riegler, Patrick
• Assistant Examiner(s): Chu, Jenq-Kang
• Application Number:
  US13/482,424
• Time in Patent Office: 1,715 Days
• Field of Search: 715/205, 715/201, 715/202, 715/230, 715/255, 705/9
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/5553 user representation in the game field, e.g. avatar
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/6623 for animating a group of characters
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/345 Summarisation for human users
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/258 Heading extraction; Automatic titling; Numbering
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/814 comprising emergency warnings arrangements specially adapted for emergency or urgency in broadcast systems H04H20/59; arrangements for providing alarms, notifications, alerts to substation in data switching networks H04L12/1895

Abstract

A command center system includes forms to receive incident data describing an incident and at least one incident list that is populated with incident data from the input forms. The system also includes a status page that includes a list of links to incident pages, each incident page constructed from incident data in the at least one incident list. The status page also includes a daily briefing link to a daily briefing page that is constructed once per day from incident data in the at least one incident list such that incident data added after the current daily briefing page is constructed are not included in the daily briefing page. The status page also includes an incident content feed link for a content feed of incident data added to the at least one incident list and a daily briefing content feed link for a content feed of daily briefing pages.

Claims

1. A command center system that collects information about incidents using incident input forms as well as information about global headlines, travel alerts and command center on-call personnel and stores information in data structures that are accessed to generate a daily briefing page to employees about currently occurring events, recently resolved events, global news events and travel alerts that pose a threat to employees, comprising:

incident input forms configured to receive incident data describing an incident that affects employee travel to a facility;

at least one incident first that is populated with incident data from the incident input forms;

at least one computer for providing a command center status page, wherein the command center status page comprises;

a monitoring section including a list of links to incident pages for a set of incidents, each incident page constructed in part from incident data in the at least one incident list;

a monitoring alerts document dynamically constructed based on data contained in an incident page about currently active incidents that continue to be monitored by command center personnel;

an incident content feed link for a content feed of incident data added to the at least one incident list;

a daily briefing link to a current daily briefing page that is constructed once per day from incident data in the at least one incident list such that incident data that are added after the current daily briefing page is constructed are not included in the current daily briefing page;

a daily briefing content feed link for a content feed of daily briefing pages; and

,

said at least one computer further including a display for displaying a user interface to command center personnel, said user interface being configured to;

receive changes to the current daily briefing page for use in constructing an edited daily briefing page; and

receive an instruction to store the edited current daily briefing page; and

in response to the instruction to store the edited current daily briefing page, storing the edited current daily briefing page in memory.

2. The command center system of claim 1 wherein the command center status page further comprises contact information for a person on-call in a command center.

3. The command center system of claim 1 wherein the current daily briefing page comprises a summary of at least one incident.

4. The command center system of claim 3 wherein the current daily briefing page further comprises links to previous daily briefing pages.

5. The command center system of claim 1 wherein the current daily briefing page further comprises links to travel alert pages.

6. The command center system of claim 1 wherein the current daily briefing page and the command center status page further comprise headlines.

7. The command center system of claim 1 wherein the list of links to incident pages comprises a list of links to incident recap pages for a set of closed incidents.

8. The command center system of claim 7 wherein the incident content feed link comprises a content feed link for a content feed of incident data for closed incidents.

9. The command center system of claim 1 wherein the current daily briefing page may be edited by the user.

10. A method for constructing a daily briefing page using information about incidents using incident input forms as well as information about global headlines, travel alerts and command center on-call personnel and stores information in data structures that are accessed to generate a daily briefing page to employees about currently occurring events, recently resolved events, global news events, travel alerts and response team activations, comprising:

retrieving a daily briefing template in response to a user input;

determining a current date and time;

searching, by a processor, incident data lists stored in memory to retrieve information about currently active incidents that affect employee travel;

searching, by a processor, the incident data lists to retrieve information about closed incidents;

searching, by a processor, global headline lists stored in memory for information about global headlines that are applicable to the current date and time;

constructing, by a processor, a daily briefing page by inserting the information about currently active incidents, the information about closed incidents and the information about global headlines into the briefing template;

providing the constructed daily briefing page to a user at a command center through a user interface; and

providing the constructed daily briefing page such that a user may edit the constructed daily briefing page; and

receiving changes to the constructed daily briefing page and altering the constructed daily briefing page to form an edited daily briefing page;

receiving an instruction to store the edited daily briefing page; and

in response to the instruction to store the edited daily briefing page, storing the edited daily briefing page in memory.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the currently active incidents and the closed incidents each affected at least one facility associated with a same corporation.

12. The method of claim 10 further comprising receiving a request for a feed of a daily briefing page and in response returning a link to the edited daily briefing page.

13. The method of claim 10 wherein constructing a daily briefing page further comprises inserting links to daily briefing pages constructed for other days.

14. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising computer-executable instructions that when executed by a processor cause the processor to perform steps comprising:

receiving incident data through a form comprising at least one pull-down menu that is used to select a location where an incident occurred from a collection of preset locations;

constructing a daily briefing through steps comprising;

selecting incident data to include in the daily briefing based in part on a current date;

selecting travel alerts to include in the daily briefing based in part on the current date;

selecting headlines to include in the daily briefing based in part on the current date;

providing the daily briefing to employees about currently occurring events, recently resolved events, global news events and travel alerts that pose a threat to employees; and

receiving changes to the constructed daily briefing and altering the constructed daily briefing to form an edited daily briefing;

receiving an instruction to store the edited daily briefing; and

in response to the instruction to store the edited daily briefing, storing the edited daily briefing in memory.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14 further comprising receiving a request for an RSS feed of the daily briefing and in response providing a uniform resource locator for the altered daily briefing.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14 wherein constructing the daily briefing further comprises inserting links to a plurality of past daily briefings into the daily briefing.

17. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14 further comprising:

receiving a request for a command center status page; and

constructing the command center status page through steps comprising;

inserting in the command center status page incident data for a collection of incidents;

inserting an RSS feed link in the command center status page to allow a user to request a RSS feed of incident recap reports;

inserting in the command center status page a link to the daily briefing; and

inserting an RSS feed link in the command center status page to allow a user to request a RSS feed of daily briefings.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein constructing the command center status page comprises inserting contact information for an on-call person in the command center.

19. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14 further comprising inserting an indication of whether a response team has been activated for the incident.