Patent Issued for Post-Disaster Assessment Systems and Methods (USPTO 10002339)

Bioterrorism Week

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Bioterrorism Week -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Prieto, Robert (Princeton Junction, NJ); Vaughn, David (Central, SC); Plumblee, II, Jeffrey M (Lyman, SC); Ball, Marnie (Arlington, VA), filed on July 11, 2014, was published online on June 19, 2018 (see also Fluor Technologies Corporation).

The patent's assignee for patent number 10002339 is Fluor Technologies Corporation (Sugar Land, TX).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: "The following description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.

"Post disaster assessment of infrastructure systems and buildings currently relies on gross assessments utilizing aerial and satellite surveys and subsequent on the ground inspections conducted visually through human interaction. These assessments are time consuming and may involve large teams of people for extended periods in logistically challenged areas. Pre-event conditions are not typically captured other than at a gross aerial level because of the costs involved.

"Quite a bit of effort has been directed to enabling business entities to recover from disastrous loss of data or maintain business continuity. Example works directed toward maintaining business continuity include U.S. Pat. No. 7,058,847 to Guzman et al. titled 'Concept of Zero Network Element Minoring and Disaster Restoration Process' filed Dec. 30, 2002; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,757,111 to Brettell et al. titled 'Method and System for Insuring Data Integrity in Anticipation of a Disaster' filed Apr. 5, 2007. Further, additional effort has been directed toward establishing or maintaining communication networks as discussed in U.S. patent application publication 2005/0273330 to Johnson titled 'Anti-Terrorism Communications Systems and Devices' filed May 25, 2005. Unfortunately these efforts fail to provide insight into physical damage or disaster assessments at a building site after a disaster.

"Beyond data or business continuity, effort has also been put forth toward some forms of assessment after a damaging event. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,266,558 to Gray titled 'Method and Apparatus for Global Relief Management' filed Feb. 2, 2004, describes providing damage assessment reports among authorized parties. Further, U.S. Pat. No. 7,898,458 to Shibayama et al. titled 'Disaster Countermeasure Support Method', filed Aug. 3, 2007 as an international application describes comparing radar images to grasp a damaged situation. In a similar vein, U.S. patent application publication 2009/0265193 to Collins et al. titled 'Methods and Systems for Automated Property Insurance Inspection', filed Apr. 17, 2009, discussing using video images to inspect damage in support for insurance claims. Still another example includes U.S. patent application 2011/0130636 to Daniel et al. titled 'Systems, Methods, and Devices for the Rapid Assessment and Deployment of Appropriate Modular Aid Solutions in Response to Disasters', filed Aug. 27, 2010, which discuss using remotely operated vehicles (unmanned aerial sea or land systems) in support for conducting assessments. Still further, U.S. patent application 2012/0319893 to Yun et al. titled 'Damage Proxy Map from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar Coherence' filed Jun. 20, 2012 discusses using map information from prior and subsequent to a damage event to create a proxy damage map. These references, although useful in their own right, fail to provide a more complete understanding of the multi-faceted impact that a disaster can have one a building site as well as the impact according to different levels of the site (e.g., below ground, ground level, above ground, etc.).

"All publications herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application were specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.

"Thus, there is still a need for a disaster assessment system capable of providing multi-faceted and multi-level impact estimates."

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors' summary information for this patent: "The inventive subject matter provides apparatus, systems and methods in which a disaster assessment system can generate one or more impact reports detailing the nature of how a disaster has impacted a building site based on sensor data associated with the building site that is collected after the disaster. According to one aspect of the inventive subject matter, the disaster assessment system includes a sensor platform, a pre-disaster database, a historic disaster database, and an impact assessment engine.

"The sensor platform can be programmed to obtain sensor data reflecting a building site before, during, and/or after an event. For example, a fleet of unmanned vehicles (e.g., unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned ground vehicles, etc.) can be equipped with sensors (e.g., image sensors, LIDAR, radar, thermal sensors, etc.) and instructed to collect sensor data of a building site before an event occurs in order to capture pre-event assessment data. The pre-event assessment data can then be stored within the pre-disaster database. Further, the sensor platform can be used to obtain post-event assessment data after the event.

"In some embodiments, the impact assessment engine derive a pre-event three-dimensional (3D) model of the building site based on the pre-event assessment data, and derive a post-event 3D model of the building site based on the post-event assessment data. The 3D models indicate sizes (e.g., lengths, width, heights, etc.), relative locations, relative elevations, and thermal information of different components of the building site.

"The impact assessment engine then leverages both the pre and post-event 3D model of the building site to generate one or more damage profiles for the building site. The damage profiles could include information related to damages to the building site across different dimensions. For example, the damage profiles can include damage information related to a specific type of damage possibly including flood damage, loss of life, structural damage, or other types of damages. Further the damage profiles can reflect damages at different levels of the building site. The damage profile can include a below-surface profile (e.g., faults, geology, basements, etc.), surface profile (e.g., flooding, mud slides, debris, etc.), above-surface profile (e.g., debris cloud, dust, containments, etc.), or even internal structural profiles. The impact assessment engine can further leverage the damage profile to produce an impact report for the building site where the impact report can provide one or more estimates relating to the damage. Example estimates can include indictors of risk, damage, costs, logistical constraints, communication outages, flooding, insurance claims, or other types of estimates.

"Various objects, features, aspects and advantages of the inventive subject matter will become more apparent from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, along with the accompanying drawing figures in which like numerals represent like components."

For additional information on this patent, see: Prieto, Robert; Vaughn, David; Plumblee, II, Jeffrey M; Ball, Marnie. Post-Disaster Assessment Systems and Methods. U.S. Patent Number 10002339, filed July 11, 2014, and published online on June 19, 2018. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10002339.PN.&OS=PN/10002339RS=PN/10002339

Keywords for this news article include: Business, Fluor Technologies Corporation.