Collaborative incident alert system for mobile devices

Abstract

An incident alert system enables a plurality of users to participate in a collaborative process to report and be alerted of incidents such as emergencies or hazards. A user uses a networked mobile phone with geo-positioning capability to communicate with a server to report incidents and to inquire about potential incidents of interest based on the user's current geographic position. Reports of incidents are transmitted to the server accompanied by the current position of the user/mobile phone. A user's mobile phone is preferably configured to automatically submit periodic inquiries to the server based on the user's location. Upon receipt of an inquiry from a user, the system queries a database to identify reports of potential interest to the inquiring user. The system analyzes the reports to determine whether to alert the inquiring user of a potential incident of interest.

1 . A method for sending alerts of incidents based on geographic position and time, the method comprising:
 receiving a plurality of reports of position transmitted from a plurality of networked mobile devices, wherein each report of position is one of a sequence of automatic and periodic reports of position transmitted by one of the plurality of networked mobile devices;   storing each report of position in a database in association with an identifier of the transmitting networked mobile device and a time;   identifying an incident;   identifying a geographic position associated with the incident;   identifying a geographic range related to the identified geographic position;   identifying a temporal range related to a present time;   in response to the identification of the incident, querying the database based on the geographic range and the temporal range to identify one or more networked mobile devices; and   sending an alert of the incident to the one or more identified networked mobile devices.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein querying the database comprises estimating a present position of a networked mobile device based upon a plurality of positions previously reported by the networked mobile device. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein querying the database further comprises identifying a geographic range related to the estimated present position. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the reports of position comprise inquiries. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein each incident can be: an emergency, a hazard, or a request for assistance. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the incident is identified based upon a report of the incident received from a networked mobile device subsequent to and separate from receiving the plurality of reports of position. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the incident is identified based on a phone call placed to an emergency call center. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the database is queried further based on a zone of interest associated with at least one of the plurality of networked mobile devices.