Taoglas Offers COVID-19 Solutions | Symmetry Blog

COVID-19 has brought about a series of unprecedented issues that has affected industries across the globe. As soon as the virus began, social distancing and crowd control became the primary methods of stopping the spread. To assist in the fight against the pandemic, Taoglas developed CROWD Insights–a cloud-based service platform for crowd monitoring that helps businesses and cities control the amount of traffic in areas most vulnerable to the virus. With social distance compliance still being regulated, CROWD Insights tackles the issue of monitoring places like hospitals and retail locations, where large gatherings are inevitable. The platform displays real-time analytics on an intuitive online dashboard that allows administrators to monitor and manage crowd movements. CROWD Insights serves as a powerful tool for large enterprises to operate normally while complying with social distancing regulations.

Benefits

The biggest advantage of the CROWD Insights platform is its ability to quickly and easily deploy from any location. This is because the system leverages existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to collect crowd sourcing data, without the need for additional hardware. The method is simple–track people’s movements by registering their personal mobile devices that are connected to various wireless access points within the monitored region. CROWD Insights works with most Wi-Fi APs, such as Cisco, Meraki, Aruba, Ruckus, and Openmesh.

Most wireless devices have their Wi-Fi already turned on, or background-enabled by an app. Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) is a method that utilizes this connection to track an individual’s movement by constantly measuring the signal connection strength between the AP and the individual’s phone, and then using this data to triangulate relative distance and position. Additionally, APs can pinpoint an individual’s ID by collecting the beacon and SSID information of mobile devices during connection sessions. Although the CROWD Insights technology is easily deployable from any location; performance and outcomes depend on the state of the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure (number of APs, location of APs, availability of “Location Service” protocol, AoA packet of AP), as well as user behaviors.

The CROWD Insights platform provides live heat maps, dwell-times, motion flows, and population count of indoor and outdoor environments via a high-resolution display. Administrators can generate auto-reports–displaying hourly, daily or weekly insights in a respective zone, with the ability to quickly deploy and monitor newly developed zones. Collecting and reporting real-time crowd sourcing data, allows zone admins to set up notifications to be alerted when capacities are met. This is extremely important, as it now allows public health services to be more reactive to the pandemic by allowing them to quickly gauge a zone’s risk and adjust its limit over time. CROWD Insights is available via a mobile app, with plans to expand to cellular carriers in the future.

Case Study

Large enterprises like school campuses have already trialed and proven the value of Taoglas’ CROWD Insights platform. To follow public health guidelines for managing crowd sizes on campus, DCU Alpha came to Taoglas for an analytics platform that can efficiently monitor and control the number of students in certain areas. With no new hardware required to integrate the platform, DCU Alpha was able to get CROWD Insights deployed and fully operational within a single day. Crowd limits were set at campus locations and population count, routes, and dwell times were immediately able to be monitored by campus management and security. The configurable dashboard of CROWD Insights enabled DCU Alpha to set up notifications to be alerted when campus personnel needed to intervene in areas at risk of overcrowding. With the importance of social distancing and proper crowd size regulations, DCU Alpha used Taoglas’ CROWD Insights to establish an example of how public spaces, municipalities, venues, and any other large enterprise can leverage wireless technology to combat today’s threat of COVID-19.