System and methods for generating quality, verified, synthesized, and coded information

• US 9,965,528 B2
• Filed: 06/10/2014
• Issued: 05/08/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 06/10/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Remote Sensing Metrics, LLC
• Original Assignee: Remote Sensing Metrics, LLC
• Inventors: Diamond, Alex H., Diamond, Thomas Peter
• Primary Examiner(s): Thai, Hanh
• Application Number:
  US14/301,098
• Publication Number:
  US 20140365470A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,428 Days
• Field of Search: 707708, 707722, 382103, 382170, 382181, 382291, 382294
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063 Operations research, analysis or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

The present invention relates generally to gathering, verifying, and providing information in an easy-to-understand format. Representations are obtained and evaluated to extract selected content or content information from which certain synthesized information can be gathered, collected, estimated, calculated, or determined. In addition, supplemental synthesized information may be gathered, collected, estimated, calculated, or determined.

Claims

1. A computer method for generating economic comparable data for one or more retail stores comprising the steps of:

capturing by a recording device one or more visual recordings of the one or more retail stores;

sending to a processor each of the one or more visual recordings;

generating by the processor one or more representations from the each of the one or more visual recordings;

refining by the processor each of the one or more representations based on one or more criteria to produce one or more refined representations;

extracting by the processor content for evaluation from each of the one or more refined representations;

evaluating by the processor the content, wherein said evaluating step comprises the steps of;

selecting dates for a year-over-year comparable time period;

picking parameters for cloud cover and satellite collection angles;

identifying the each of the one or more representations that include an image of the one or more retail stores to produce identified representations;

sub-selecting the identified representations that meet a threshold value and match the selected dates for the year-over-year comparable time period to produce selected representations;

unifying one or more representations of the one or more retail stores and the selected representations into a new feature;

dissolving the new feature based on spatial overlap and a first number of common fields;

sorting the dissolved feature by lowest to highest panchromatic resolution;

calculating and removing duplications of the new feature, wherein the duplications of the new feature include two or more representations of the one or more retail stores captured on a same day;

dissolving the new feature based on a second number of common fields only found in the each of the one or more representations metadata to produce a remaining feature, wherein the second number of common fields is less than the first number of common fields; and

displaying the remaining feature on a display, wherein the remaining feature is the economic comparable data for the one or more retail stores.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said evaluation step further comprises balancing the extracted content to improve the comparability of the extracted content to additional extracted content.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein said balancing step is automated.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising coding the remaining feature by assigning one or more symbols to represent the economic comparable data for the one or more retail stores.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the first number of common fields is selected from a first group consisting of “

Ticker”

, “

Address”

, “

State”

, “

Store_OID”

, “

Zip”

, “

CATALOGID”

, “

ACQDATE”

, “

AVPANRES”

, “

BROWSEURL”

, “

CLOUDCOVER”

, “

Latitude”

, and “

Longitude”

.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the second number of common fields is selected from a second group consisting of “

CATALOGID”

, “

ACQDATE”

, “

AVPANRES”

, “

BROWSEURL”

, and “

CLOUDCOVER”

.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said evaluating step further comprises the steps of:

calculating an area of the remaining feature to produce a calculated remaining feature;

detecting and removing the calculated remaining feature having an area of less than 2 square kilometers and over 40% cloud cover, and the calculated remaining feature having an area of less than 1.5 square kilometers to produce a final feature;

buffering the final feature under 3 square kilometers to be larger than 3 square kilometers; and

counting the final feature by date of acquisition.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the economic comparable data for one or more retail stores is selected from a group consisting of a fill rate of a parking lot, a market share percentage of a particular retail store in geographic location, a trend in retail store revenues over time or over a geographic region, a value of sales of one or more retailers, a value of the share of vehicles over a specific time period, and a close rate of vehicles in a parking lot of a retailer versus actual transactions measured by the retailer.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the economic comparable data for one or more retail stores is a value of a share of vehicles over a specific time period, wherein the value of a share of vehicles over a specific time period is calculated as:

a total of vehicles at retailer A, divided by the total of vehicles at the retailer A plus a total of vehicles at a retailer N, where N is any number of retailers.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the recording device is one or more selected from a group consisting of a camera, a satellite camera, and an aerial mapping camera.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more criteria is selected from a group consisting of resolution, pixilation, cloud cover, date of creation, date of modification, time of day of creation, type of camera, zoom in or zoom out, completeness of coverage of a topic, removal of duplicate portions of target information, and perspective from which the one or more representations was captured.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the threshold value includes a cloud cover of less than 70 percent across a full image and an average panchromatic resolution of less than 0.85 centimeters per pixel.

13. A computer system for generating economic comparable data for one or more retail stores comprising:

a recording device capturing one or more visual recordings of a geographic location;

a processor in communication with the recording device, the processor including instructions that when executed cause the processor to;

receive the one or more visual recordings and generate one or more representations from each of the one or more visual recordings,

extract content for evaluation from each of the one or more representations, said evaluating step further comprising the steps of;

selecting dates for a year-over-year comparable time period;

picking parameters for cloud cover and satellite collection angles;

identifying the each of the one or more representations that include an image of the one or more retail stores to produce identified representations;

sub-selecting the identified representations that meet a threshold value and match the selected dates for the year-over-year comparable time period to produce selected representations;

unifying one or more representations of the one or more retail stores and the selected representations into a new feature;

dissolving the new feature based on spatial overlap and a first number of common fields;

sorting the dissolved feature by lowest to highest panchromatic resolution;

calculating and removing duplications of the new feature, wherein the duplications of the new feature include two or more representations of the one or more retail stores captured on a same day;

dissolving the new feature based on a second number of common fields only found in the each of the one or more representations metadata to produce a remaining feature, wherein the second number of common fields is less than the first number of common fields; and

displaying the remaining feature on a display, wherein the remaining feature is the economic comparable data for the one or more retail stores.

14. The computer system of claim 13, wherein said evaluating step further comprises balancing by the processor the extracted content to improve comparability of the extracted content to additional extracted content.

15. The computer system of claim 13, further comprising coding the remaining feature by the processor by assigning one or more symbols to represent the economic comparable data for one or more retail stores.

16. The computer system of claim 13, wherein at least one of the economic comparable data for one or more retail stores is selected from a group consisting of a fill rate of a parking lot, a market share percentage of a particular retail store in geographic location, a trend in retail store revenues over time or over a geographic region, a value of sales of one or more retailers, a value of the share of vehicles over a specific time period, and a close rate of vehicles in a parking lot of a retailer versus actual transactions measured by the retailer.

17. The computer system of claim 13, wherein the economic comparable data for one or more retail stores is a value of a share of vehicles over a specific time period, wherein the value of a share of vehicles over a specific time period is calculated as:

a total of vehicles at retailer A, divided by the total of vehicles at the retailer A plus a total of vehicles at a retailer N, where N is any number of retailers.

18. The computer system of claim 13, wherein the threshold value includes a cloud cover of less than 70 percent across a full image, and an average panchromatic resolution of less than 0.85 centimeters per pixel.