Patent ID: 7343272

Claim:
A system for detecting clusters in space and time using input data on occurrences of a phenomenon and characteristics at a plurality of locations and times comprising: a memory device for storing computer readable program data executable by a processor in communication with the memory device, the machine-readable program data comprising: an expectation generation module determining expected occurrences of a phenomena at a plurality of locations and a plurality of times; an occurrence modeling module determining actual occurrences of the phenomena at a plurality of locations and a plurality of times; a search module searching the expected occurrences and the actual occurrences for a plurality of candidate solutions, wherein each solution is represented as a set of points in the three-dimensional space, and wherein each point corresponds to a location at a time; a convex container module determining at least one solution corresponding to a selected convex container shape from the plurality of candidate solutions, wherein the convex container module determines a solution that maximizes a measure representing the equality between the set of points in the given candidate solution and the set of points included in the solution, given the selected convex container shape; and a solution evaluation module determining a strength metric for each solution determined by the convex container module, the search module selecting and storing to the memory device a solution having a desirable strength, wherein the solution having the desirable strength indicates a dominant cluster in the input data.