System and method for aggregating multi-source data and identifying geographic areas for data acquisition
Disclosed is a system and method for collecting, processing and aggregating satellite imagery with large volumes of other digitized data for analysis by a human user in order to identify geographic areas for further data collection and/or analysis. More particularly, the invention relates to identifying geographic subjects for satellite image acquisition by aggregating and analyzing first-time changes detected by satellite imagery as well as weather report data, social media streams and newswire feeds. An analytics engine uses rules to qualify, flag and correlate asynchronous data from a plurality of sources with changes on the earth's surface, and catalogs and stores the qualified and correlated data where it may be queried and used to prepare reports or recommendations for future satellite image acquisition targets.
1. A computer-implemented method of identifying areas for satellite imagery acquisition comprising:
detecting a persistent first time change (FTC) at a geographic location by comparing two or more satellite images of the geographic location at two or more points in time;
defining a geographic boundary of the FTC;
marking as an “FTC event” if the geographically bounded FTC exceeds an area threshold;
collecting asynchronous data from a plurality of data sources, each data source comprising a plurality of geotagged and timestamped asynchronous data packets (ADPs), wherein the ADPs comprise social media postings, weather conditions at a weather location, newswire stories, and Open Street Maps (OSM) maps;
qualifying an ADP by assessing that ADP for reliability and authenticity;
designating one or more qualified ADPs as an “asynchronous data event;” correlating the FTC event and the qualified asynchronous data event;
predicting a geographic progression of the correlated events; and
identifying a target geographic location for future satellite imagery acquisition based on the predicted geographic progression.
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising the step of flagging an ADP as potentially relevant to a geographic area of interest (AOI).
3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising the step of ascertaining the flagged ADP's geographic location from its geotag and comparing geographic locations of the flagged ADP and the AOI.
4. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of storing and cataloging in a data warehouse the qualified ADPs, the FTC event, and the asynchronous data event.
5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising a historical asynchronous data event that is stored and cataloged in the data warehouse.
6. The method of claim 4 wherein the correlating step utilizes an analytics engine employing a plurality of rules.
7. The method of claim 6 further comprising the step of flagging an ADP as potentially responsive to one or more rules.
8. The method of claim 6 wherein the rules comprise a geographic location query.
9. The method of claim 6 wherein the rules comprise rules auto-generated by the analytics engine.
10. The method of claim 6 wherein the rules comprise flagging a deviant weather condition because the weather condition exceeds a preset number of standard deviations from the norm for the time and place of the weather condition.
11. The method of claim 6 wherein the rules comprise flagging a deviant seismic condition because the seismic condition exceeds a preset magnitude of earth disturbance on the Richter scale.
12. The method of claim 6 wherein the asynchronous data sources further comprise text messages transmitted via at least one cell tower.
13. The method of claim 12 wherein the rules comprise flagging a deviant text volume condition because text volume exceeds a preset number of standard deviations from the norm for the at least one cell tower.
14. The method of claim 6 , further comprising a step of notifying a user of correlated events via an analyst service.
15. The method of claim 14 , further comprising a step of communicating at least one cataloged ADP to the user via the analyst service.
16. The method of claim 14 , further comprising a step substantially contemporaneous with the collecting step of ingesting an ADP into an ingest service for preprocessing.
17. The method of claim 16 further comprising an extracting step to extract unstructured data from the ingested ADP.
18. The method of claim 6 wherein the correlating step comprises correlating asynchronous data events based on a user-specified interest.
19. A system for identifying geographic areas for satellite imagery acquisition comprising:
a satellite imagery source, the satellite imagery source comprising images indicating a persistent First Time Change (FTC) of a first geographic location;
a plurality of asynchronous data sources, the asynchronous data sources comprising social media postings, a continual newswire feed, Open Street Maps data, weather conditions, cell tower usage data, and a seismic disturbance feed;
a social media ingest service, wherein the ingest service de-dupes, de-bots, and renders social media postings into a common format for processing;
an analytics engine that receives data from the satellite imagery source and from one or more of the asynchronous data sources, wherein the analytics engine comprises a computer processor governed by processing rules that qualify, flag, correlate and catalog a portion of the received data;
a data warehouse in communication with said analytics engine, wherein said data warehouse comprises at least one relational database, said data warehouse storing the data cataloged by the analytics engine in one or more memories;
an analyst service in communication with said analytics engine and in communication with said data warehouse, wherein said analyst system accepts queries from a human user concerning the first geographic location via a user interface, said analyst system transmitting the query to said data warehouse and to said analytics engine;
a report generated by the analyst service and delivered to the user, said report comprising 1) qualified and flagged asynchronous data that correlates with the FTC of the first geographic location and 2) coordinates for a second geographic location associated with said qualified and flagged asynchronous data; and
a satellite controller that directs the satellite imagery source to acquire at least one image of the second geographic area.