US Patent 8972187 Varying the degree of precision in navigation data analysis

For a segment of a route, a navigation data gathering system and method may progressively increment the precision of data analysis in proportion to the number of people actively on a route segment. Navigation data may be anonymized to preclude the possibility of correlating navigation data with personal data to track users or infer private information. Further, the system or method may determine if information for a route segment can be used at all based on the number of users of that segment. If the number of users does not exceed a threshold, the information collected on that route may not be used for other purposes. Thus, the system and method may use navigation data related to a busy section of an interstate highway at the level of precision with which the data is gathered, but reduce the level of precision of data available for a rarely used road segment.