Determining a count of occurrences of expressed concepts within regions

Abstract

A method of determining a count of occurrences of concepts within regions is provided. The method includes receiving natural language expressions, each expression being uttered by a person located at a different geolocation, receiving geolocation information of each person having uttered the natural language expressions and associating the geolocation information of each person with a corresponding natural language expression and for each natural language expression: parsing the natural language expression to create an interpretation, deriving concepts, and recording, in a database, concepts, geolocation, and associations of the concepts and geolocations; and accumulating, for each region, a count of occurrences of each concept having an associated geolocation within the region.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of determining a count of occurrences of concepts within regions, the method comprising:
 receiving a plurality of natural language expressions, each expression, of the plurality of natural language expressions, being uttered by a person located at a different geolocation;   receiving geolocation information of each person having uttered one or more of the natural language expressions and associating the geolocation information of each person with a corresponding natural language expression of the plurality of natural language expressions;   for each natural language expression of the plurality of natural language expressions:
 parsing the natural language expression to create an interpretation; 
 deriving, from the interpretation, one or more concepts; and 
 recording in a database:
 the one or more concepts; 
 geolocation; and 
 associations of the one or more concepts and geolocations; and 
 
   accumulating, for each region of a plurality of regions, a count of occurrences of each concept having an associated geolocation within the region.   
     
     
         2 . A method of determining a count of occurrences of concepts within regions, the method comprising:
 receiving, from a plurality of devices, a plurality of natural language expressions, each expression, of the plurality of natural language expressions, being uttered by a person located at a different geolocation;   receiving geolocation information of each person having uttered one or more of the natural language expressions and associating the geolocation information of each person with a corresponding natural language expression of the plurality of natural language expressions, the geolocation information of each person indicating the geolocation of that person;   for each natural language expression, of the plurality of natural language expressions:
 parsing the natural language expression to create an interpretation; 
 deriving, from the interpretation, one or more concepts; and 
 recording in a database:
 the one or more concepts; 
 the geolocation of the person having uttered the natural language expression; and 
 associations of the one or more concepts and the geolocation of the person having uttered the natural language expression; and 
 
   accumulating, for each region of a plurality of regions, a count of occurrences of each recorded concept having associated geolocation information within the region.   
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein the deriving, from the interpretation, of the one or more concepts, comprises:
 deriving one or more expressed concepts; and   deriving one or more additional concepts that are more generic classes in an ontology.   
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 3 , wherein use of the ontology follows associations from more specific concepts to more general concepts. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising:
 determining an emotion from a natural language expression of the plurality of natural language expressions; and   recording the emotion in the database.   
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising updating an index of geolocations in dependence upon the geolocation information of one or more persons. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein the geolocation information is represented in a system that can render maps at different scales. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 2 ,
 wherein the geolocation information includes an indication of accuracy, and   wherein the method further comprises recording the indication of accuracy in the database.   
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 2 ,
 wherein the geolocation information includes a timestamp of measuring the geolocation included in the geolocation information, and   wherein the method further comprises recording, in the database, information indicative of an age of the measured geolocation at a time of an utterance of a natural language expression of the plurality of natural language expressions.   
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising:
 subsequent to receiving a natural language expression, of the plurality of natural language expressions, requesting fresh geolocation information;   receiving fresh geolocation information; and   recording the fresh geolocation information in the database.   
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising:
 receiving a person ID; and   recording the person ID in the database.   
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising:
 receiving a person ID; and   updating an index of person IDs.   
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising:
 determining a type of a device of the plurality of devices; and   recording the type of the device in the database.   
     
     
         14 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising:
 receiving a timestamp; and   recording the timestamp in the database.   
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising:
 receiving a timestamp; and   updating an index of timestamps.   
     
     
         16 . A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium having computer code that, when executed by at least one computer processor, causes the at least one computer processor to perform a method comprising:
 receiving a natural language expression from a person;   receiving geolocation information including a geolocation of the person when the person uttered the natural language expression;   parsing the natural language expression to create an interpretation; and   creating, in a database, a record based on the interpretation and the geolocation.