IIT Roorkee develops a unique surveillance system to tackle COVID-19

In an endeavour to augment government efforts for surveillance of COVID suspects, Dr. Kamal Jain, Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Roorkee, has developed a unique tracking mobile application which is endowed with state of- the art features. The app can track individuals and also can do geofencing around him. The system will get an alert, if geofencing is violated by the quarantined person.

In case GPS data is not received, the location will be obtained automatically through the triangulation of mobile towers. If the internet is not working in a certain area, the location will be received through SMS. If the application gets off, an alert will be received immediately. The location of the person can be received by sending an SMS to the device. It allows the sharing of quarantined persons/places photographs on a google map, uploading geotag image to a server. Furthermore, administrators can view all reports on a map. If installed on the affected person, it can provide a history of all people in his vicinity for a defined period.

“The tracking system allows for state-of-the-art surveillance during COVID-19. Besides facilitating quarantine management, it helps to overcome overcrowding at any location by issuing an alert to the predefined agency. This is our small step to supplement government efforts in these testing times,” said Prof Jain.

The surveillance system is a plug and play device and allows tracking with an accuracy of +/- 5 meters through notifications at 2, 10 or 20 seconds. Besides live tracking, the administrator can view the entire movement history of an individual. In case of loss of data, the device sends an alert to the concerned team. Other features of the app include multi-camera support, surveillance magnetic device, halt time and auto camera click on preset time.

“We are committed to aiding the efforts of the government during this unprecedented time. This system will greatly help in tracking and surveillance of COVID 19 suspects,” said Prof. Ajit K. Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee.