Published on April 28th, 2020 | by Guest

LocationSmart Provides Clients with Increasingly Important Location Based Services During the Coronavirus Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic is raging around the world, with no signs of letting up in the near-term. While the bare essentials, such as groceries and prescriptions, are available in stores, LocationSmart understands that people who want almost anything more must shop online.

At the same time, deliveries of essential items needed for the fight against coronavirus and to ensure places like grocery stores and pharmacies remain stocked must be sustained. This means that the entire supply chain must remain stable and reliable. LocationSmart is keenly aware of these needs and their location-based services can help companies to not only track shipments, but also gain visibility across the supply chain to ensure the safe delivery of goods around in the world.

Tracking and Monitoring Shipments

The industry standard for tracking wireless devices is Global Positioning System (GPS), a satellite-based navigation technology. GPS makes it possible to track devices anywhere in the world, when coupled with wireless communications it allows companies to track shipments in real-time. This allows application developers to build a solution that tracks the location of trucks, planes, boats, and cargo containers, providing information like:

Where a shipment is at any given time
Driving speed
When a shipment has gone off route or stopped
When to send help for the driver
Accurate ETA that can be relayed to customers to keep them up-to-date

In addition, some GPS-equipped solutions make it possible for brands to collect sensor data from inside warehouses, trailers, and other containers in order to track environmental factors such as temperature, shock, vibration, tampering, and whether a shipment or package is opened before arrival. This is particularly important when it comes to the shipment of perishable goods, such as food, medicine, and other medical supplies.

Unfortunately, there are a number of situations where GPS is not able to obtain position data. There are places where a GPS signal is unavailable or unreliable, physical obstructions, such as between tall buildings or within natural canyons that can block the signal. Even the storage of cargo deep within large buildings, carried within metal or stacked containers can interrupt the signal. When these things happen, there is no way for companies to accurately track the location of shipments and goods with GPS alone.

The LocationSmart Solution

LocationSmart offers their universal Global Site Identification (GSID) location solution for application developers to utilize for these situations. This solution has proven reliable again and again for LocationSmart customers, providing a multi-source service with full global coverage. GSID is able to track devices and sensors in locations where GPS fails, which makes it invaluable when precious or sensitive cargo is on the line.

GSID location determination works in more than 200 countries and can be used to track devices that are connected via Wi-Fi, LTE, GSM, CDMA, or WCDMA (UMTS). This includes devices that are roaming as long as they are able to communicate with their application back-ends. It also acts as jump-start whenever devices require assistance data for first-fix GPS location information. All that is required for location tracking is that the device be connected to a network and its onboard software to transmit a few simple network parameters to its back-end servers.

LocationSmart Benefits

The benefits of utilizing LocationSmart’s GSID service are many. They include:

Device location when the GPS signal is blocked or unavailable
Tracking for non-GPS devices that use Wi-Fi, LTE, GSM, CDMA, or WCDMA (UMTS)
Multi-source service that offers maximum coverage
Quick response times with high availability and high yield
Location tracking for devices that are roaming domestically or internationally
The ability to obtain Wi-Fi level accuracy and Cell-ID
Data for over 120 million cell sites and nearly 2 billion access points
Conserve battery life for untethered devices

In addition to these GSID benefits, there are also cloud-based advantages that include:

Secure client-specific access
Quick integration using RESTful web services APIs
No need to download any mobile apps or specialized software

Results of Using LocationSmart

LocationSmart’s location-based solution allows companies to use GSID to accurately track the location and sensor data of devices in real-time. This provides a multi-layer approach to reliable location intelligence for the transit lifecycle of a shipment when the use of GPS is not an option subject to outages. Ultimately, this ensures a company can maintain a high quality of service for their customers, partners, and vendors, while streamlining location tracking of all devices and shipments. It also results in:

Reduced fuel usage
Lower insurance costs
Enhanced productivity
Decreased potential for theft

Article credits:

This article has been contributed by LocationSmart.

LocationSmart is the world’s largest LaaS provider, offering cloud-based location services to many customers, from Fortune 500 companies to startups. Their location-based services work across networks, platforms, and devices for a global reach of more than 200 countries.

For more information or to speak with someone at LocationSmart about their services, please visit https://www.locationsmart.com.

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Tags: clients, Coronavirus, covid, COVID-19, crisis, location based services, LocationSmart