Mobile location trackers boost safety, security

Mobile location trackers boost safety, security

Mobile location trackers find wealth of applications in safety,
security
Marshall Towe
Contributor
Jakarta

The situation could have been a tragedy.

On Feb. 27, 2003, police officer Mike Privitt's pickup spun
off an icy road in Tarrant County, Texas. Dazed, confused and
trapped alone in an overturned vehicle, the temperature was
dropping below freezing. In a situation in which timing was
critical, rescuers managed to find him just minutes after he
called 911 on his cell phone -- even though, he personally, was
unaware of his location.

A continent away, it could have been the worst day in the life
of a jewelry shop employee. In Tokyo, Japan, on the morning of
Nov. 27, 2002, a bag of jewelry valued at US$1 million in the
employee's care was stolen from the luggage rack of the downtown
train he was taking. According to Fuji TV's Super News, just one
hour after the robbery, the police had tracked down the bag to a
location 12 kilometers away from the train and recovered it -
contents intact.

Great work from emergency services in both cases - but in both
cases they had a little help. This came in the form of an eye in
the sky: the wireless position location system. It can use the
handset to pinpoint a person or object's location on the ground
to within fifty to one hundred and fifty meters.

Originally designed for military use, this internationally
deployed location finding system is based on a network of 24
satellites orbiting the earth, and their ground stations. Global
Positioning System (GPS) technology allows users to triangulate
between multiple GPS satellites to pinpoint locations, and has
long been used by logistics companies to track the progress of
cargo shipments across the world.

Personal use, however, is only just gaining ground. GPS
technology was embedded in the cell phone that saved Officer
Privitt by transmitting his position to rescuers during his 911
call.

As people calling emergency services are often panicked,
injured or otherwise incoherent, the U.S. Federal Communications
Commission, or FCC, stipulated in 1996 that (subject to certain
conditions and schedules) all American mobile service providers
must provide the emergency location of cellular phone users for
wireless 911 calls. The FCC requirement for this handset-based
location solution is for accuracy within 50 meters, 67 percent of
the time, and within 150 meters 95 percent of the time. This
means that users involved in an emergency situation -- or the
victim of a crime who calls 911 from a cell phone -- can be
assured that emergency services will be informed of his or her
position.

To really be effective, location solutions have to function
across all environments, including those that are highly blocked,
such as dense urban or indoor locations, and in thick foliage.
California-based QUALCOMM, the developer of chipsets that power
the most advanced mobile phones, delivers the complete solution
with its gpsOne technology.

While conventional GPS devices offer great outdoor accuracy,
gpsOne can pinpoint a receiver to within 5-15 meters in a broad
range of environments, well beyond the minimum FCC requirement.
So instead of just locating the general area, say within a few
blocks... not only the exact street can be identified but which
side of the street. This explains how police were able to track
a stolen jewelry bag across over 12 kilometers of Tokyo's dense
urban sprawl.

"The gpsOne tracking system is really extraordinary," says
QUALCOMM's Arnold Gum. "We are seeing it used for a tremendous
range of services."

In Korea, Japan and the United States, by early 2003, there
were over 10 million gpsOne terminals functioning. To date,
gpsOne is the most widely deployed commercial, high-accuracy
positioning system and remains the only commercially proven GPS-
based system for third generation wireless or 3G.

That's good news for mobile telecommunications service
providers as they can increase their revenues from cell phone
users. Aside from emergency services, the technology helps users
find points of interest such as nearby restaurants, gas stations,
and rest facilities and even navigate their way through the
streets of a city; or find the location of a friend or family
member.

Even so, it is in the personal safety and security field that
these devices arguably offer their greatest benefits. In Japan,
gpsOne has been adopted by SECOM, the leading provider of
security services in that nation. It was a SECOM anti-theft tag
that, when activated, allowed police to recover the stolen
jewelry bag. Similar devices are also used as vehicle trackers:
When extensively employed, such devices could eventually make car
theft an occurrence of the past.

"Imagine the peace of mind a parent would enjoy if he or she
knew exactly where his or her child was at any time," says Gum.
"Today, in Korea and Japan, you can provide your child with a
gpsOne device and, in an unexpected situation, locate your child
or even have them driven home."

In Japan, SECOM Corporation's CoCo SECOM service provides
location services for children and senior citizens as well as
asset tracking tags for theft deterrence. In the United States,
Oprah Winfrey has praised a wearable child safety watch with a
GPS location finder embedded as, "unbelievable... cutting edge
technology that will keep your child safe".

Far from alienating the population of an increasingly
technologically complex world, location applications are saving
lives and delivering peace of mind.

This is just the beginning. Stranded individuals, lost
children and stolen or misplaced property could be significantly
reduced as technologies like gpsOne are more extensively deployed
in the years to come.

My phone, my hero? You bet, so don't leave home without it.