GPS takes to the street

By Doug Beizer
February 25th, 2008

Business grows as new applications emerge

The dangerous unpredictability a SWAT team faces when entering an unfamiliar building to disarm a gunman is obvious. The ability to know exactly where all the team members are and silently exchange text messages makes the situation a little more controllable.

Emerging technology that puts Global Positioning System (GPS) and communication tools into handheld computers and phones is giving first responders those capabilities. Government agencies are finding GPS technology useful for tactical and routine tasks, such as filling potholes. Layering new applications on top of GPS solutions is a growing business for contractors that many say is still in its infancy.

Last summer, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched the Street Conditions Observation Unit (Scout) program. Inspectors report street issues — such as potholes, graffiti or open fire hydrants — using GPS-enabled BlackBerrys. TeleNav provides the electronic forms and GPS application for the program.

“We wanted to come up with something to help 311 go out and be proactive in finding problems,” said Girish Chhugani, executive director of citywide initiatives for New York City. “And we wanted something quick and easy to use.”

TeleNav’s electronic forms provided the ease of use that New York officials wanted. When an inspector finds a problem, he or she can enter details about it using the BlackBerry keyboard. Then the location of the problem is marked using GPS coordinates.

However, Manhattan’s famous skyscrapers impede the technology. A phenomenon called canyoning makes the GPS locations there inaccurate about 40 percent of the time, Chhugani said. In those cases, inspectors manually type an address or intersection.

Despite the technology hurdles, the program has sent more than 9,000 alerts to 311 since it was launched in October.

The technology also does job dispatching, wireless timesheets and turn-by-turn navigation, said Sal Dha- nani, TeleNav’s co-founder.

The other part of the application is a Web site that allows officials to log on and see where inspectors have been. It also has a dispatch board.

“All of that data can be integrated with a back-end system that a government organization might have,” Dhanani said. “So if they want to, for example, take that wireless timesheet information and put it into a payroll system, we have [Application Programming Interfaces] that an integrator can use to bring that data back into an organization’s systems.”

Cities use the technology to track an array of services. For example, it can track and quickly reroute snow- plows during storms. Cities use the timesheet feature to ensure that workers are actually at a job site when they punch in at the beginning of a shift.

“There are so many city processes that can be automated and taken paperless,” Dhanani said. “I don’t think we know what those processes will be in the future necessarily.” Uses for the military and first responders are among the biggest opportunities for integrating GPS with other applications.

CHI Systems Inc. of Fort Washington, Pa., has an offering called the Small Unit Situational Awareness system (SUSA). It tracks individual warfighters or first responders. The system runs on handheld units, phones and other portable devices. It provides tracking and collaboration in areas with or without GPS capability.

The technology works in a field, on a road, inside a building, or even inside a cave or tunnel, said Jeffrey McCrindle, vice president of sales and marketing at CHI.

The collaboration capabilities are attractive to many of CHI’s customers.

“We’ve demonstrated in an exercise where someone is walking down a beach and tasks [an unmanned aerial vehicle] to take a picture of something further down the beach,” McCrindle said. “Then the image is sent to the person’s handheld unit.”

At this year’s Super Bowl, GPS devices were used to track and manage security employees in real time via the Internet. The GuardTrax Security Force Locator by NovaTracker, of Cranford, N.J., uses a GPS antenna and cellular communications to pinpoint locations and activity. It combines that data with map- ping and satellite imagery software that is accurate to within several feet.

The use of visualization tools to track people or other assets is gaining momentum in the government market. They are becoming more popular because they accelerate analysis for an increasing amount of information, said David Leis, chief marketing officer for the GuardTrax offering at NovaTracker.

“What took hours and manpower can now be done in seconds via the Web,” Leis said. Another factor increasing the popularity of visualization tools is that they are much more capable today than they were even a year ago.

The key to a successful project is to carefully evaluate what an agency needs to do with a GPS solution, Leis said. GPS components can be added to existing systems, or agencies can buy an end-to-end system.

“In our case, we go to market with an end-to- end solution because it can be implemented much quicker and the benefits to the organization or public can be realized almost immediately,” Leis said.

Doug Beizer (dbeizer@1105govinfo.com) is a staff writer at Washington Technology.