Communications: electrical – Systems – Network signaling
Utility Patent
1999-03-19
2001-01-02
Wu, Daniel J. (Department: 2632)
Communications: electrical
Systems
Network signaling
C340S690000, 36
Utility Patent
active
06169476
ABSTRACT:
REFERENCES CITED
U.S. Pat. No.4,155,042 Issued May 15, 1997 Permut et al.
U.S. Pat. No.4,633,515 Issued Dec. 30, 1986 Uber et al.
U.S. Pat. No.4,956,875 Issued Sep. 11, 1990 Bernard et al.
U.S. Pat. No.5,214,757 Issued May 25, 1993 Mauney et al.
U.S. Pat. No.5,838,237 Issued Nov. 17, 1998 Revell et al.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a system that detects, analyzes, and provides early warnings of all types of natural and manmade disasters that could impact any size area or specific individuals in an area. Early warnings are transmitted to any selected receiver or any selected group of receivers in any size of geographic area. The transmitted early warnings provide time for system users to seek shelter or take other action to avoid injury or death. The transmitted early warnings also initiate automated responses by a wide variety of commonly used electronic devices to reduce property damages as well as injuries and lives lost during the occurrence of natural and manmade disasters.
DESCRIPTION OF THE BACKGROUND ART
Almost every community experiences some of the many forms of natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, lightning storms, or tsunamis. In modern times communities are also increasingly faced with manmade disasters from chemical, biological, or nuclear accidents. These emergency situations may affect all or a portion of the persons and property in these communities. For most citizens advanced early warnings of these natural and manmade catastrophic threats are either non-existent or are received by very small percentages of the population when disasters threaten.
Principal conclusions from the literature indicate that the few early warning systems in place today suffer many deficiencies. They warn areas much larger than is necessary. They provide warnings only for a limited number of threats and are not universal in nature. They do not provide timely warnings with a maximum lead time for proper response. They typically rely on warning sirens that must be in hearing range or on broadcast warnings that rely on an active receiver with human attention and human responses.
For these reasons the studies have shown that a very small percentage of any threatened population from a disaster actually receives an early warning from any source, and when received, is not timely or is ignored as a probable false alarm for the location of the receiver.
For early warning systems of natural and manmade disasters to be effective they should meet the following requirements:
Only those in actual danger of risk must receive warnings, for when warnings are routinely issued for areas in which only a small percentage of the population is in danger, the warnings lose effectiveness and are often ignored;
The warning system must be able to provide warnings for all types of natural and manmade disasters that might reasonably be expected to impact a specific area;
The warnings must be timely in nature and must provide a maximum amount of warning time to allow for timely responses;
The warnings must give appropriate and detailed information describing the nature and type of disaster event that is imminent;
The warnings must be received and utilized by a wide variety of devices in order to reach people no matter what activity they are involved in;
The warning signals must be able to activate warning devices that have been left in an inactive mode; and
The warning signals must be received and utilized by a wide variety of devices that will initiate automatic responses that do not require human action or intervention, and thereby function to save lives, and reduce injuries and property damages.
Most people today first hear of a disaster event from a commercial broadcast to their television or radio. These broadcasts typically require the receiver to be turned on, and to have the attention of a person to receive the warning. Most of the receivers do not even function in the event of a power failure and so could not provide a warning. Further, the warnings are very general in nature and typically provide only general unnecessarily widespread geographic area warnings the size of one or more counties. They typically warn only of weather related disasters and were originally designed to work in combination with outdoor sirens as part of the civil defense network for nuclear war threats. The warning sirens have very high maintenance requirements, often cannot be heard indoors, and are too area non-specific and general in nature. These systems do not and cannot fulfill the requirements for an effective early warning system.
One step up in effectiveness are the various tone alert pagers and specialized weather radios that are on the market. These systems suffer from the same type of generalized warnings and low user confidence that is seen with all current systems. Additionally, these are single use devices that must be programmed for their location and this limits the number of people willing to make an investment. Further none of these systems is designed to provide warning signals to a wide variety of pre-programmed commercial devices that can perform automatic responses in the event of a disaster event to limit the loss of lives, injuries, and property damages.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,155,042 to Permut et al., speaks to the need to warn specific receivers of a wide variety and type through the use of specifically encoded transmissions with the first transmission alerting the devices to receive the second warning signal with the effect being able to warn a specific or group of specific receivers. Permut assumed the knowledge of receiver location and does not speak to the need in a large population of receivers to know the specific location of each receiver in order to know which receivers to alert. Permut did not teach to the need to know other types of geographically related information to properly analyze and determine which receivers to warn so that only those receivers needing to be warned would receive warnings. Permut further assumed site-specific receivers and did not address the issue of an early warning receiver's location of the need to warn receivers based on location and other geographic information. Finally, Permut did not teach to determining the characteristics of a disaster prior to warning and therefore could not address the issue of appropriate warnings to appropriate areas in a timely manner.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,633,515 to Uber et al., addresses the issue of activating receivers left in an inactive mode, and provides for a tone alert detector to search multiple frequencies for a specific disaster broadcast message that is preceded by a specified type of tone prior to its broadcast insuring that the receiver will find and play the broadcast warning. Uber does not teach how disasters are detected and analyzed, or teach the ability to locate receiver position and how to transmit warnings to only selected locations.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,956,875 to Bernard et al., offers an encoding means in a upgraded fashion to Uber and suffers the same lack of additional means to a truly effective disaster early warning network.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,214,757 to Mauney et al., teaches a method to create digital maps to locate specific locations with a variety of related geographic attributes. This allows the type of GIS information needed to make proper analysis of geographic information of any specific user. Mauney did not teach or anticipate early disaster warnings or methods to warn.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,838,237 to Revell et al., addresses personal alarm devices which record specific location of mobile or stationary devices in order to transmit real time location information to police and law enforcement agencies in the event of kidnapping or other types of personal danger for individuals. Revell did not teach or anticipate a means toward an effective disaster early warning system as noted above.
A truly effective early warning system should be able to determine exactly which early warning receivers are in actual danger from a natural or manmade disaster, and then should be able to transmit an e
Tweel , Jr. John
Wu Daniel J.
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