Patent Document ID: 20050182502
Application ID: 10777548
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. 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: 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; and a solution evaluation module determining a strength metric for each solution determined by the convex container module, the search module selecting a solution having a desirable strength, wherein the solution having the desirable strength indicates a dominant cluster in the input data.