1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to risk assessment. More particularly, the present invention relates to estimating the likelihood of an adverse event.
2. Background Art
Risk assessment can make important contributions to a broad spectrum of endeavors otherwise having little in common. For example, the private insurance industry and the public corrections system may both benefit from risk profiling. With respect to insurance, accurate modeling of risk is essential to the profitability of companies who generate their revenues from the promise of hazard indemnification. At the same time, scarce public resources and even public safety itself may be at stake when corrections departments use risk profiles in formulating sentencing and/or parole recommendations. Large private venues such as theme parks or destination resorts, and virtual environments capable of supporting large visitor populations may use risk profiling as well, for example, to evaluate the potential for adverse or otherwise undesirable interactions between visitors to the physical venue or virtual space.
Heavily populated environments in particular, be they virtual or real, can place substantial burdens on the resources available to provide security or intervention should an adverse event, such as a conflict, act of physical or sexual abuse, or harassment, for example, occur among the visitors to a venue. As a result, risk profiling may be used in an attempt to identify and preempt those adverse events at their inception, or earlier. One conventional approach to identifying adverse events in the form of potentially undesirable social interactions in a large venue includes monitoring the conduct and/or language used by visitors, to detect specific behaviors or expressions.
For example, an attempt to prevent undesirable interactions among visitors to a chat room or online community may be performed by monitoring the communications among visitors for the presence of key words or phrases identified as indicative of the conduct to be suppressed. In that instance, profanity, overtly sexual expressions, derogatory or threatening words, and the like, may be identified as trigger expressions symptomatic of an incipient adverse event. However, because even friendly interactions may include one or more trigger expressions, the conventional approach typically increments a count of trigger expressions by each such expression detected in an interaction, and then acts affirmatively to intervene only when a particular count total is achieved.
While perhaps effective in providing a crude level of risk assessment, the conventional approach described above is both inefficient and less than optimally effective in identifying potentially adverse events. The conventional approach is inefficient because, by calling for intervention on the basis of a mere aggregate count of trigger expressions, precious security resources may be over utilized or misdirected for little or no reason, due to “false alarms.” For instance, a single individual who, without malice, repeatedly utters a profanity may trigger an unnecessary intervention.
The same conventional approach may be ineffective if the security assets temporarily dedicated to the previously described profane and verbally incontinent utterer are unavailable or delayed when another, more serious, adverse event is detected. Both the inefficiency and the relative ineffectiveness of the conventional approach are simply magnified as the number of venue visitors and the real or virtual size of the venue grows.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing a risk profiling solution capable of estimating the likelihood of an adverse event so as to enable effective intervention when appropriate, while also reducing unnecessary resource expenditures due to false alarms.
There are provided risk profiling systems and methods, substantially as shown in and/or described in connection with at least one of the figures, as set forth more completely in the claims.
The features and advantages of the present invention will become more readily apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art after reviewing the following detailed description and accompanying drawings, wherein:
The present application is directed to a risk profiling system and a method for use by that system for evaluating the likelihood of an adverse event. The following description contains specific information pertaining to the implementation of the present invention. One skilled in the art will recognize that the present invention may be implemented in a manner different from that specifically discussed in the present application. Moreover, some of the specific details of the invention are not discussed in order not to obscure the invention. The specific details not described in the present application are within the knowledge of a person of ordinary skill in the art. The drawings in the present application and their accompanying detailed description are directed to merely exemplary embodiments of the invention. To maintain brevity, other embodiments of the invention, which use the principles of the present invention, are not specifically described in the present application and are not specifically illustrated by the present drawings. It should be borne in mind that, unless noted otherwise, like or corresponding elements among the figures may be indicated by like or corresponding reference numerals.
Users 138a and 138b may be users utilizing communications server 110 to send messages to other users of a virtual community, or they may be recipient users receiving messages mediated by communications server 110, for example. In one embodiment, for instance, network 130 may comprise a packet network such as the Internet, and users 138a and 138b may be remotely located from one another, but interact through mutual participation in a chat room hosted on communications server 110. In another embodiment, network 130 may be a local network facilitating communication across a physical venue, such as a theme park or destination resort. In that embodiment, users 138a and 138b may be theme park visitors or resort guests physically located within that respective venue and communicating with one another through communications server 110.
According to the embodiment of
Processor 112 of risk profiling system 100 may be configured to utilize risk profile unit 120 to evaluate the likelihood of an adverse event as described above. In one embodiment, risk profile unit 120 may include risk analysis engine 122, risk features database 124, and weighting module 126, with adverse event categories database 128 being omitted from that embodiment. Risk features database 124 may comprise a plurality of risk features, such as linguistic expressions identified as trigger expressions precipitating or otherwise corresponding to adverse events. For example, a plurality of risk features comprising individual words, word combinations, and/or phrases, such as insults, slurs, salacious comments, or the like, may be utilized as a reference database by risk analysis engine 122 in estimating the likelihood of an adverse event.
Weighting module 124 may be configured to assign a weighting factor to the risk features extracted by risk profiling system 100. It is noted that a single risk feature may correspond to more than one potential adverse event. Because the predictive relevance of such a risk feature may vary considerable among different adverse events, weighting module 126 can enable risk analysis engine 122 to render a more accurate determination of probability of occurrence of a particular adverse event from the weighted risk features, than if non-weighted risk features were used, as typically occurs in the conventional approach to risk assessment described previously. As a result, not only can risk profiling system 100 be configured to alert an administrator of the system if the probability of occurrence of an adverse event reaches a predetermined threshold, but that alert can be issued with a reduced risk of producing a false alarm compared to risk assessment systems utilizing the conventional approach.
Although the embodiment of
Returning to the embodiment of risk profiling system 100, as shown in
Moreover, in some embodiments in which risk profile unit 120 includes adverse event categories database 128, risk analysis engine 122 can be further configured to prioritize the estimation of the likelihood of an adverse event according to its category. For instance, risk analysis engine 122 may utilize adverse event categories database 128 to estimate the likelihood of adverse events related to the category “fire” before estimating the likelihood of adverse events related to the category “offensive vulgar or profane language.”
Although the embodiment of
The operation of risk profiling system 100, in
Referring to step 210 of flowchart 200 and risk profiling system 100 in
The exemplary method of flowchart 200 continues with step 220, which comprises assigning a weighting factor to each of the risk features detected in step 210, to produce one or more weighted risk features. Step 220 may be performed by weighting module 126 of risk profile unit 120, as previously explained in conjunction with
According to the embodiment of
In one embodiment, estimating the likelihood of an adverse event may comprise performing a logistic regression on the sum of the weighted risk features formed in step 230 of the example method of
where the pi are the risk features detected in step 210, and the wi are the corresponding weighting factors assigned in step 220. Then, step 240 may comprise performing a logistic regression according to:
where the logit z is defined by equation 1, and equation 2 defines the logistic function ƒ(z).
Referring again to
Moving now to step 250 of flowchart 200, step 250 comprises alerting an administrator if the likelihood of any adverse event reaches a predetermined threshold. Step 250 may be performed by risk profile unit 120 under the control of processor 112, for example. In one embodiment, the administrator may comprise an expert system authorized to control or mobilize various resources of the real or virtual venue to intervene in order to stop or prevent the adverse event. In other embodiments, the administrator may comprise a human operator of risk profiling system 100, who may be alerted by risk profile unit 120 through a visible or audible message or alert, for example.
In some embodiments, however, step 250 may not occur. For example, in those embodiments, steps corresponding to steps 210 through 240 may be performed for many possible adverse events, with the estimated likelihood of each adverse event being recorded and compared to the likelihood of other adverse events, to provide a comprehensive risk assessment model for substantially all adverse events of interest to the operators of the real or virtual venue. In some embodiments, such a comprehensive risk assessment model could be updated substantially continuously, or periodically, according to the preferences of the venue operator and/or system constraints, to provide an ongoing assessment risk in the venue.
Thus, the present application discloses a risk profiling system and method. By extracting one or more of a plurality of possible risk features, the risk profiling system is able to identify possible sources of adverse events. By aggregating the extracted risk features, and then estimating a likelihood of each potential adverse event, the risk profiling system enables effective intervention in and/or monitoring of undesirable adverse events. Because the risk profiling provided by embodiments of the present invention can distinguish among adverse events according to both their likelihood of occurrence and their severity or importance, resources required for intervention in or suppression of adverse events can be efficiently and proportionally allocated, with reduced likelihood of overuse or misdirection of those resources.
From the above description of the invention it is manifest that various techniques can be used for implementing the concepts of the present invention without departing from its scope. Moreover, while the invention has been described with specific reference to certain embodiments, a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that changes can be made in form and detail without departing from the spirit and the scope of the invention. It should also be understood that the invention is not limited to the particular embodiments described herein, but is capable of many rearrangements, modifications, and substitutions without departing from the scope of the invention.