Patent Application
20050256827
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methodology for utilizing data mining techniques in the area of land zoning management.
2. Introduction to the Invention
Data mining techniques are known and include disparate technologies, like neural networks, which can work to an end of efficiently discovering valuable, non-obvious information from a large collection of data. The data, in turn, may arise in fields ranging from e.g., marketing, finance, manufacturing, or land.
We have now discovered novel methodology for exploiting the advantages inherent generally in data mining technologies, in the particular field of land zoning management applications.
Our work proceeds in the following way.
We have recognized that a typical and important “three-part” paradigm for presently effecting land zoning management, is a largely subjective, human paradigm, and therefore exposed to all the vagaries and deficiencies otherwise attendant on human procedures.
In particular, the three-part paradigm we have in mind, works in the following way. First, a land zoning manager develops a demand database comprising a compendium of individual demand history—e.g., the demand's response to historical supply situations. Secondly, and independently, the land zoning manager develops in his mind a supply database comprising the land zoning manager's personal, partial, and subjective knowledge of objective land facts culled from e.g., the marketing literature, the business literature, or input from colleagues or salespersons. Thirdly, the land zoning manager subjectively correlates in his mind the necessarily incomplete and partial supply database, with the demand database, in order to promulgate an individual's demand's prescribed land zoning management evaluation and cure.
This three-part paradigm is part science and part art, and captures one aspect of the problems associated with land zoning management. However, as suggested above, it is manifestly a subjective paradigm, and therefore open to human vagaries.
We now disclose a novel computer method which can preserve the advantages inherent in this three-part paradigm, while minimizing the incompleteness and attendant subjectivities that otherwise inure in a technique heretofore entirely reserved for human realization.
To this end, in a first aspect of the present invention, we disclose a novel computer method comprising the steps of:
The novel method preferably comprises a further step of updating the step i) demand database, so that it can cumulatively track the demand history as it develops over time. For example, this step i) of updating the demand database may include the results of employing the step iii) data mining technique. Also, the method may comprise a step of refining an employed data mining technique in cognizance of pattern changes embedded in each database as a consequence of supply results and updating the demand database.
The novel method preferably comprises a further step of updating the step ii) supply database, so that it can cumulatively track an ever increasing and developing technical land zoning management literature. For example, this step ii) of updating the supply database may include the effects of employing a data mining technique on the demand database. Also, the method may comprise a step of refining an employed data mining technique in cognizance of pattern changes embedded in each database as a consequence of supply results and updating the supply database.
The novel method may employ advantageously a wide array of step iii) data mining techniques for interrogating the demand and supply database for generating an output data stream, which output data stream correlates demand problem with supply solution. For example, the data mining technique may comprise inter alia employment of the following functions for producing output data: classification-neural, classification-tree, clustering-geoographic, clustering-neural, factor analysis, or principal component analysis, or expert systems.
In a second aspect of the present invention, we disclose a program storage device readable by machine to perform method steps for providing an interactive land zoning management database, the method comprising the steps of:
In a third aspect of the present invention, we disclose a computer comprising:
We have now summarized the invention in several of its aspects or manifestations. It may be observed, in sharp contrast with the prior art discussed above comprising the three-part subjective paradigm approach to the problem of enhancing land zoning management, that the summarized invention utilizes inter alia, the technique of adaptive analysis.
We now point out, firstly, that the technique of adaptive analysis is of such complexity and utility, that as a technique, in and of itself, it cannot be used in any way as an available candidate solution for the present invention, to the extent that the problem of enhancing land zoning management is only approached within the realm of the human-subjective solution approach. Moreover, to the extent that the present invention uses computer techniques including e.g., adaptive analysis techniques, to an end of solving a problem of land zoning management, it is not in general obvious, within the nominal context of the problem and the technique of adaptive analysis, how they are in fact to be brought into relationship in order to provide a pragmatic solution to the instant problem. It is, rather, an aspect of the novelty and unobviousness of the present invention that it discloses, on the one hand, the possibility for using the technique of adaptive analysis within the context of land zoning management, and, moreover, on the other hand, discloses illustrative methodology that is required to in fact pragmatically bring the technique of adaptive analysis to bear on the actuality of solving the problem of land zoning management.
The invention is illustrated in the accompanying drawing, in which
The detailed description of the present invention proceeds by tracing through three quintessential method steps, summarized above, that fairly capture the invention in all its sundry aspects. To this end, attention is directed to the flowcharts and neural networks of
Attention is now directed to
