Creating and monitoring alerts for geographical area

Abstract

A geographical alert system creates an alert for a user-defined geographical area, detects a change to a feature stored in a map-related database, identifies whether the changed feature falls within the user-defined geographical area, and sends a notification to a user when the changed feature of the map-related database falls within the user-defined geographical area. To set up a geographical alert, an alert editor retrieves map data from a map-related database via an alert engine and displays the map data in a visual display to a user. The user then selects a geographical area that the system will automatically monitor for changes. The user may also specify a feature type, and an alert notification type for the alert. The alert engine then processes the user- specified geographical area into geographical area data and stores an alert and its corresponding geographical area data, feature type, and alert notification type in an alert database. When a change in the map-related database is detected, the alert engine obtains the geographic coordinate point data associated with the change and determines whether the geographical coordinate point data associated with the change falls within the geographical area of the stored alert in the alert database and if so, determines if the feature of the changed feature matches the feature of the stored alert. If the feature and geographical coordinate point data of the change corresponds to the feature and geographical area data of the stored alert, then the alert engine transmits an alert to the user using the alert notification type attributes of the stored alert.

Description

technical field [0001] The present disclosure relates to geographic-based alerts, and more particularly to a system and method configured to automatically identify changes in data stored for or associated with a user-specified geographic area and notify the user of the changes. Background technique [0002] Digital maps are displayed and used in a variety of devices including car navigation systems, handheld GPS units, mobile phones, and many websites. In addition, digital map databases can contain large amounts of information such as satellite images, roads taken from ground level, street photos, specific information for businesses, three-dimensional computer models, and the like. Digital maps that incorporate three-dimensional computer models include, for example, buildings, structures, and physical geographic features such as trees as three-dimensional objects. The digital map may further include terrain relief as a three-dimensional elevated relief map. However, the in...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

While users can obtain new information relatively quickly, this technique is still time-consuming and difficult to use to monitor information changes for many restaurants or other business entities within a particular geographic Each merchant or business entity establishes a separate subscription

In addition, the technology is limited to obtaining information updates directly from merchants or business entities offering subscription services, which is usually less than all merchants or business entities in a specific geographic area

Furthermore, this technique cannot be used to obtain updates applied to general information stored in map databases, such as changes made to road data, changes in satellite imagery, etc.

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