GeoFencing Technology’s Virtual ‘Circle of Trust’

Geofencing, as the name suggests, is a location-based technology that creates a virtual boundary or fence. It is a feature in a software program that uses the global positioning system (GPS) or radio frequency identification (RFID) to define a virtual geographical boundary, establishing a radius of interest that can trigger an action in a geo-enabled phone or any other portable electronic device. It is a very useful technology to define a virtual boundary around a real-world geographical area, to generate alerts based on the defined coordinates of a geographic area.

Applications

Geo-location technology allows mobile apps to do incredible things, and geofencing is the next step in this ground-breaking innovation. One of the first users of geofence was farmers who would equip a herd of cattle with GPS units. When the herd of cattle moved out of the geofence set by the farmer, the farmer would receive an alert.

Geofencing, used with child location services, can notify parents if a child leaves a designated area. It allows users of the system to draw zones around places of work, customer's sites and secure areas. These geo-fences when crossed by an equipped vehicle or person can trigger a warning to the user or operator via SMS or email.

In some companies, geofencing is used by the human resource department to monitor employees working in special locations especially those doing field works. Using a geofencing tool, an employee is allowed to log his or her attendance using a GPS-enabled device when within a designated perimeter.

How it works

Geofencing allows us to set up automatic alert triggers when a device enters or exits the boundaries defined by the administrator. For example, if the geofence is a geographic virtual boundary surrounding a user’s house, an e-mail or text message is automatically triggered and sent to the user by a geofence-enabled app on the phone when his child with the cell phone enters this area.

It is possible to establish a geofence area around a neighbourhood and have alerts sent out on specified days. For example, alerts could be sent out by a collection company on days fixed for garbage collection as per the schedule entered in geofence-enabled app.

By incorporating Google Earth, administrators can define boundaries superimposed on top of a satellite view of a specific geographical area. Or, they can do this by longitude and latitude, or through user-created and web-based maps.

Geofence virtual barriers can be either active or passive. Active geofences require the end user to turn on location services and open a mobile app. Passive geofences are ‘always on,’ rely on Wi-Fi and cellular data instead of GPS or RFID, and quietly work in the background.