IIT Roorkee develops app to locate coronavirus suspects

Roorkee : To boost government's efforts in locating the coronavirus suspects, IIT Roorkee has developed a mobile tracking application endowed with state-of-the-art features.

The application can track the COVID-19 suspects who have been quarantined through the geofencing technology, which marks a virtual geographic area and triggers a response if an individual exits or enters the boundary.

An alert is sent as soon as the suspect breaks the geofencing, Prof Kamal Jain from the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Roorkee, said.

In case GPS signal is not received then the location will be obtained automatically through the triangulation of mobile towers. If the internet is not working in an area then the location will be tracked with the help of a SMS.

Even if the application is turned off then also an alert is issued to the authorities.

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 mobile of 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 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,” Jain said.