Patent ID: 7346597

Claim:
A geospatial event forecasting engine for forecasting the likelihood for occurrence of at least one event type, comprising: a spatial database storing geospatial boundary information for one or more areas of interest, and further storing geospatial characteristic information pertaining to at least one variable of interest in the form of one or more variable layers associated with said one or more areas of interest, with the variable of interest being unrelated to past event type data for the at least one event type; a boundary component for establishing a geospatial boundary pertaining to a first area of interest and a grid containing a plurality of cells within said boundary; a function component for identifying a first functional measurement of a cell element for each cell to said at least one variable of interest for each of said one or more layers associated with said first area of interest, and for indexing said first functional measurement for each cell, thereby establishing a database of first functional measurements unrelated to the event type; a signature derivation component for receiving geospatial information related to one or more past events of at least one event type, including location information for said one or more past events, said signature derivation component further identifying and indexing an event functional measurement from the location information for each of said one or more events to the at least one variable of interest for each of said layers, and deriving a signature pattern for said event type based upon the event functional measurement; and an event likelihood determinant component for determining a level of signature match between said derived signature pattern and at least one cell of said plurality of cells, whereby a forecast of an event-type likelihood can be displayed on at least a portion of a display of said geospatial boundary based on said determined level of signature match.