General geofencing. Virtual boundaries in a busy world.
The benefits of geofencing in the sedomly new era of IoT and the historical and new wave advancements in sensors and measurement tools enables positive information to be attained and put to good use to track valuable assets. Implementation of virtual and invisible gates and boundaries under proper disclosure not only notifies owners of potential theft, but also tracks and modifies asset tagging and tracking in work areas, government facilities, museums, places of interest and objects of value that when lost can prove financial difficulties for it’s owners and organization.
Geofencing has been around for quiet some time and has been widely used by professionals who implement the technology for their clients in security, agriculture, construction, business and other fields. As the technology becomes more widely available and decline’s in cost, more business and asset holders may use virtual gating to identify potential theft, the mismanagement of assets, accidental movement and a wide variety of other reasons assets, people and objects go into the wrong places by choice or by mistake. Compared to conventional geofencing tools which were complex in design and more limited in functionality, new IoT related geofencing tools are capable of managing environments their surroundings and access more accurately. Incorrect flagging, triggering and intersecting in virtual fields are now easily manageable and fluid in implementation. Geofencing provides asset owners with the ability to see and act responsibly upon data within or around a designated area, this could be inside buildings, rooms, land mass, in the air or on the ground through the implementation of invisible barriers that notify the owner if an environment is penetrated. Tools vary based on use case and may need precision and also modification or configuration based on what’s needed. The out of a box solution may work in some scenarios but highly unlikely to in all scenarios as environments are different and can go from simple to complex. As a virtual based notification technology using GPS and RFID, the solution can send interruption signals in normal flow or identified boundaries to a client side device such as a phone, tablet or IoT related machine to notify the user of obstructions. How this technology is implemented depends on how well the environment is known and where attributes should be set to avoid miscalculations.
In areas where assets such as construction, farming and land development, geofencing is a good tool to prevent theft or the movement of assets such as tractors, steel, metals, materials, tools, produce, inventory and supply chain initiatives that when removed could cause time, money and disruptions in the supply chain. By tagging objects and identifying surrounding objects, owners would know in advance if items moved, removed taken, adjusted or misplaced. It could also help improve existing discrepancies in the use. For example, if a construction project were taking place where valued assets such as tractors, materials, computers are in place, the loss of those items including data could have financial repercussions especially if assets cannot be retrieved. By tagging and setting boundaries of important objects within geofenced areas, asset owners can prevent or even track such items and make decisions to location or disable valued items.
The importance of geofencing tools manufactured by well versed engineering may in return enable users to take advantage of its capabilities per use case. There continues to be much work needed in this area of technology as geofencing can be implemented in simple to moderately complex areas, but where foot traffic and population density is high, newer methods, modifications and tools will need to be looked into. Furthermore geofencing should be used mainly as a preventative and placement tool for assets and decisions.