Fire fighting is one of the most important exigencies, where time is of greatest essence. Every second lost means an increase in the risk. It is most important for the fire fighters to reach the location of the fire as soon as possible, take the route that takes minimum time, and has no blockades.
Imagine a forest fire that is spreading fast and engulfing forest after forest and is raging fast towards the human inhabitations. It is extremely important for the forest officials to pinpoint the areas where the fire is spreading and the amount and location of the fire.
Navigation to Forest Fires: Forest fire points are normally collected by the satellites hovering over the planet earth and are thrown back to the respective forest department heads. Normally these are PoI (Point of Interest) that provides almost accurate points where the forest fire is seen from the satellite imagery analysis.
Once these Fire Points are received by any Forest Department, it immediately turns into a race against time for the Forest officials till the fire is doused.
Using GPS locations of the Forest Fire Points, and the area demarcated for each of the Forest ranger or officer, the navigation to the forest fire is provided through GPS tracking. The Forest ranger or officer reaches the area where the forest fire is raging, assessment and trajectory is immediately reported, and at the control center a Geofence with the possible trajectory is created.
Now through GPS tracking navigation the Fire Fighters reach the area, including the choppers with water, so that the forest fire can first be contained and stopped from spreading and then it is doused. Without GPS tracking there is no way to reach the Forest Fire as phone calls or any other technology wouldn’t provide the exact location and navigation to the Forest Fire.
Best Route Planning: For the fires that happen in the cities and towns, in the human inhabitations, it is again a race against time to reach the right place, with the right equipment. The best route planning is only possible using GPS tracking systems installed for the Fire Fighters.
Planning: When the Fire Fighters and the Fire Fighting Engines are fitted with GPS trackers, it becomes easier for the control centres to plan how the plan how the fire can be doused, as they can see on the map itself how many Fire Fighters and engines are at the location.
Monitoring Progress: Using GPS tracking systems for the assets, engines and fire fighters, the control center can easily measure and monitor the progress of the operation to douse the fire. GPS tracking of the fire fighting improves the efficiency, provides real-time reliable data from the actual area of operations, and provides other emergency departments clear understanding on the emerging scenario so that they can be pressed into services when required.
Team Tracking: Providing Personal GPS trackers to each of the fire fighters, when the team is equipped with the GPS tracking devices, the tracking of the team at the area of operation becomes clear and planning is hassle-free. This can avoid traffic jams, consistent and real-time reliable updates are available, route diversions for other traffic can be ensured, also better route planning would mean better economy of operations.
Any Fire Fighting operation must have a GPS tracking system inbuilt into the system itself so that the efficiency is improved and cost of operations is managed.
Marking locations on map can be of two types. Either it can be a point or it can be an area. If it is a point, it is called Point of Interest. If it is an area, it can be a circle, any triangle, any quadrilateral or any area of any size and is called Geo-Fence.
- A Point of Interest or a PoI can be any point like a building, a road intersection, bus terminus, or even shop.
- A Geo-fence is an area, which can be anything like a city, a village, a park, a stadium, a school or office campus, an airport or a market place, and even a locality.
- A Geo-fence or a PoI is an imaginary and virtual point or an area on a map, drawn through Geographical Information System (GIS) which comes in-built in Mobile Apps and Web Applications. This includes not only the geographical coordinates of the point or the area, it also includes more detailed information about it, including the name.
- Fleet Tracking: It’s no secret to fleet owners that geofencing is one of the most important GPS tracking features to have when it comes to keeping a watchful eye out on the . GPS tracker system provides fleets with this popular feature which can be used in many areas of your business. Most managers use geo-fences to mark off designated areas on a map, but this technology can be utilised for more than one way.
- Container Tracking: Geo-fences to define the origination, destinations and route, one can easily get updated information about the container shipment, including alerts for entering and leaving any Geo-fence en-route.
- Child Tracking: Using a GPS based child tracker, and having Geo-fences for home, school, park and other usually frequented places, it is easy to know in real-time whether the child is at safe location, and there can be immediate alert when the child leaves a Geo-fence.
- Employee Monitoring: Once the Geo-fences are created for the locations where the employees are placed or posted, one can easily identify if the employees in the field are at the designated location or have moved elsewhere. Even attendance monitoring of the field force can be maintained using a GPS Personal Tracker and Geofencing applications.
- Target Marketing: Marketing messages using Geo-fence is the trend. One can easily locate a prospective customer visiting a particular area from the Geo-fence application. Once the prospective customer is identified targeted communication can be sent to prospect. At the same time, marketing communication can be targeted using Geo-fence applications in social media where the prospects from a particular city, or a particular state can be targeted for marketing communications.
- Anti-theft Applications: Geo-fence has a huge usage in the anti-theft applications. Whenever the vehicle, be it a bike or a car, leaves a Geo-fence, which can be your home, or garage or office, you would get an immediate alert. Till the time the vehicle is inside the Geofence, the vehicle is safe.
Using Geofence, you can get better data, you are better informed about your near and dear ones, your assets. You can improve the engagement with your prospective and current clients. You can achieve improved RoI (return on investment) when you can control your costs of advertisements based on locations. You can also improve the efficiency of your people and assets, by the simple usages of Geo-fences.
Elderly parents are at great risk. Internal diseases like Alzheimer catch up. They frequently lose their way back home, and can altogether forget their identities. Their bone density is now very less, their muscles are weak and a sudden fall is not unnatural. It is common for them to fall down to break their bones, have severe head injuries.
You have your work, your travel, your career to take care of. It is important to invest in technologies that can protect them, and provide you complete peace of mind.
- Invest in a GPS tracker for the Elderly – It can be a small device they can carry with them, it can be a small wrist band too. You can exactly pinpoint where your parents are right now. Even if they lose their way, you can always find out. Even if they are indoors, through A-GPS enabled cell tower location technology you can find out where exactly they are. The device should have a large battery, so that even if they forget to charge it daily, the device continues to work. It should be small enough to carry inside the pocket.
- GPS tracker with SoS button – The GPS device must have an SoS button. A single click of this “Panic Button” there should be immediate information to you and your other family members where your elderly parents are, their current location on your phone. This would help you to immediately tend to the emergency.
- Single Click Call – The GPS tracking device you would like to provide to your elderly parents must have a single-click Call button. A single click on it should connect your elderly parents to you, or if you are not available, automatically to your next keen. Since it is an emergency situation, it is difficult for the elderly to use a smartphone to connect to you. You can talk to your parents on the emergency and provide all the help needed. A single device with these features is ideal.
- Fall down alert – The GPS tracking device you are providing to your elderly parents to protect them must have an “Accelerometer.” This would immediately get activated when the elderly has fallen down suddenly. An alert would be initiated, and your phone would come alive to the Emergency Alert of Sudden Fall Down. It is best to provide a single device that provides all the above features.
- Vitals Monitoring – A patch that measures the vital signs like temperature, heart, pulse rate, and blood pressure is extremely essential for the elderly who can’t move much. This patch would continuously send out the details through GPRS, and in case there is sudden fluctuations, or if the vitals cross a certain threshold, there would be an alert message to you, so that you can get medical help immediately.
- Video monitoring – When the elderly parents are confined to beds, and can’t move without help, it is best to have a video monitoring device fixed in the room they are confined to. You can fast forward the video to see if your parent is being taken care of completely to your satisfaction.
It is always advisable to have most of the features packed in to a single device, so ideally it is best to invest in a GPS tracking device for the Elderly, that has an SoS button, a call button, and an accelerometer. All these come in several devices and are an economic solution.
A vehicle is a considerable amount of investment. Moreover, if a vehicle is stolen, it is frequently dismantled immediately and there is very less chance of getting back the whole vehicle. Most importantly the stolen vehicles are targeted by the terrorists to be used for acts of terror. Even the mafia gangs prefer to use stolen vehicles in their operations.
All these lead to enormous hassles, both legal and otherwise. Also it is not always easy to get the full insurance amount for a stolen car.
It is in best interest to you to take all the measures to keep your vehicle secured.
- Keep your car doors locked – The security of your vehicle is compromised even while it is running, not only when it is at rest. If there is no automatic locking available, always make it sure to lock all the four / five doors, while moving or while at rest.
- Do not leave your vehicle unattended – Even if the car is locked, if kept unattended, the thieves can easily compromise the security of the car, even when all the doors are locked. It is best to park your car in a busy area where there is clear visibility and is illuminated.
- Do not leave your car running – Even if you are going out for a minute or two to go out and get your kid, or get some grocery, do not ever leave your car running. It takes just a few seconds for the car thieves to take control of your car and leave. Always switch off the ignition while you leave the car. You might like to keep the AC on if required, provided the car battery supports it.
- Roll up the windows – While moving or at rest, always roll up the windows. Windows are the easiest access points for the car thieves. Even if the car is running, when the windows are rolled down, the car thieves can easily access the vehicle and compromise your security.
- Spare keys – Never ever leave the spare keys inside the car. It is a common practice to leave the spare keys inside the car glove box. That way you are making the lives of the thieves easy. Keep the spares at home while leaving with your car.
- Valuables inside the vehicle – If you are leaving valuables inside the car, specially when on display. It is sure to attract thieves and unscrupulous gangs. It is also not wise to keep valuable and important personal documents inside the car while parked.
- Car Keys – Never keep the car keys near the front door, near the windows or at any place on display. It is safe to keep the car keys out of plain sight normally.
- Immobilizer – If your car is not fitted with one, invest in an after-market immobilizer. Always make sure it’s switched on, when you leave your car.
- Steering wheel lock – While parking your vehicle always use the steering wheel lock, so that it becomes difficult for anyone to just push the vehicle away from the parking and access it when no one is looking.
- Install GPS Tracking – The GPS tracker should ideally have features to indicate reckless driving, harsh breaking and accelerations, exceeding speed limits, sudden turns, and other similar issues. These should be reported by alerts to your mobile phone, and reports can be generated. The tracking software should have alerts for unusual stoppages, diversions from routes and other important features. In addition, if the car is stolen, you have exact idea where the car is now and which way it is moving.
Last, but not the least, get a comprehensive insurance policy, in the event when the vehicle is stolen, you are adequately covered.
GPS is a very common word today. But even a generation back, no one even heard about GPS. In the span of just few years GPS has become ubiquitous in our life and every one of us is getting psychologically and physically dependent on GPS for our everyday travel and commute to places.
Many a times when we purchase a phone or a car, we ensure they have preinstalled GPS tracking systems. There are App Cabs companies, extremely popular of late, who uses similar GPS tracking systems. Even food delivery and all other logistics operations necessarily use GPS systems. But the fact remain, very few of us really know what GPS is and how it works.
- GPS isn’t unique – GPS is one of the several space-based radio navigation systems. The US Government Owns and Operates GPS. Like many modern technologies, GPS was born out of the military during the Cold War. Nuclear deterrence was in vogue that time, and precise location of submarines and fighter jets was important. Although the Cold War had ended 4 years prior with the collapse of the Soviet Union, GPS became fully operational in 1995. At first, the highest quality signal was reserved for military use but in 2000 GPS was made freely available to the public as a national resource.
To achieve global coverage for GPS, 24 satellites are required. The first of the 24 was launched in 1989 and the 24th was launched in 1994. GPS satellites only last about 10 years, and often need servicing during their lifetime, which is why there are currently 32 GPS satellites in orbit. The extra satellites fill in the gaps when the core 24 satellites need to be serviced or decommissioned, so that coverage is maintained.
Other countries have set up their own satellite-based navigation systems, including Russia, China, India and the European Union, so that the reliance on the US based GPS system is minimized.
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- Russia was developing its system, GLONASS, at the same time as GPS and it became fully operational around the middle of 2000, though the accuracy of GPS remained higher than GLONASS.
- European Union developed Galileo, which is expected to reach global coverage by 2020 and will potentially be even more accurate than GPS and would be the first publicly owned Global Navigation Satellite System, GNSS.
- China’s GNSS is named as Beidou, and is expected to be complete by 2020, which would potentially cover the whole world and would compare with the accuracy provided by GPS.
- India also has invested heavily to develop its own GNSS and named it as IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System). The coverage of IRNSS is around the subcontinent of India, including its neighboring countries.
In short, the GPS war has begun. That’s a massive change for the United States, which for decades has had a practical monopoly on determining the location of objects through its Global Positioning System (GPS). Owning GPS has a number of advantages, but the first and most important is that global military and commercial users depend on this service of the U.S. government, putting location targeting ultimately at the mercy of the Pentagon. The development of the technology and the deployment of positioning satellites also provide a spillover advantage for the space industry and Location Business Services.
- How GPS works – The constellation of satellites above in each of the systems we mentioned earlier knows its exact position. There are GPS satellite receivers in the ground, which connects to these satellites and receives the data from them. This receiver in turn consumes these data from different satellites and calculates its exact location.
- What information does a GPS provide – A GPS would provide you exact latitude, longitude, altitude, direction of movement if any, and the precise satellite time.
- Accuracy of GPS technology – Accuracy of information from your GPS is dependent on a number of factors, such as satellite geometry, signal blockage, atmospheric conditions, and the quality and design of the receivers it uses to communicate the information. It can range from 30/50 meters to one millimeter.
At the bare minimum, if 4 satellites are within line-of-sight of any location on Earth at any time, you can ideally get a location from the GPS. More the number of satellites connected, better the satellite geometry and atmospheric conditions, the more precise the accuracy of GPS is.
Many countries have developed GPS augmentation systems, which improves the accuracy of the location in those countries through corrections. India has GAGAN (GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation) developed by ISRO. Japan has Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS).
When your GPS receiver uses these augmentation systems the accuracy improves substantially. Like in India the accuracy is higher when your GPS is GAGAN enabled.
Many a times the GPS satellite receivers use more than one system, thereby increasing the number of connected satellites. These concurrent multi-GNSS GPS receivers provide higher precision.
- GPS works even when you have no cellular signals – GPS system is based on satellite communications, which is always available, all throughout the Earth. So even if you don’t have a cellular network, your GPS should work.
Most of the times, your mobile phone would come with A-GPS (Assisted GPS), where the mobile phone uses cellular network in addition to GPS satellites to provide you location accuracy.
- GPS doesn’t work indoors – Since GPS is a system based on satellites in the line-of-sight, while you are indoors, the GPS ceases to work. Your mobile phones are equipped with A-GPS, you would still get location indoors using the cellular networks.
- The future – GPS is a relatively recent technology. We have for centuries used maps and other ways to navigate to places. Taxi drivers in most of the large cities know most of the locations, routes and navigation alternatives by heart. Researchers don’t know yet the extent of the impact on the human brain with the advent of GPS, but there is some evidence that an over reliance on GPS may also be questionable for our brains, as parts of the brain that are used to navigate and plan routes are no more active when directions are fed to us. Prolonged nonuse of these areas like hippocampus (memory and navigation) and pre-frontal cortex (decision-making and planning) of the brain can probably lead to issues, which would need more studies.
The precise location and timing ability of GPS is a critical enabler of many IoT (Internet of Things) applications. This GPS system would become the backbone for many emerging areas starting from precision agriculture, to automated vehicles, to fleet tracking, to smart mining, Smart Grid systems, Smart City implementation and many more.