IIT Roorkee Professor Develops Smartphone App To Track COVID-19 Suspects

India is currently fighting a huge war against an invisible enemy which has already taken the lives of more than 100 people in the country. The government is making all the efforts for surveillance of COVID-19 suspects. To help in this tough job Kamal Jain Professor of Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Roorkee has developed a mobile tracking app which will help in tracking the suspects.

"The tracking system allows for state-of-the-art surveillance during COVID-19. Besides facilitating quarantine management, it helps to overcome overcrowding at any location by issuing an alert to the predefined agency," said Prof Jain.

In simple words, the application is capable of tracking individuals and draw a geofence around them. The application will automatically receive an alert if a quarantined or infected person violets the geofencing. Besides, live tracking the administrator will also have the entire access of the individual's moment history which includes travelling details, people they meet and more.

The application uses GPS data, and the location of a person can also be tracked via SMS if the internet is not working on the smartphone.

"We are committed to aiding the efforts of the government during this unprecedented time. This system will greatly help in tracking and surveillance of COVID-19 suspects," said Prof Ajit K Chaturvedi, Director, IIT-Roorkee.

The application also comes with multi-camera support, halt time, surveillance magnetic device, and auto camera click. This will help in tracking a person's movement and give a clear picture with whom they are meeting.

Indian Government has also launched the AarogyaSetu app which uses Bluetooth and GPS to track the risk of coronavirus infection for a user. The app is available both on Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The application also comes with a self-assessment test. It also has a feature which has the contact list of all the help centres across India.

Source