Varied Scenarios and Alternatives
Lets us look at two scenarios to analyse the requirements and the alternatives.
Security is essential for vehicles transporting bank cash and a Fleet Management System seems a must for this scenario. What kind of a system should this fleet use? We suggest, an Active Fleet Management System.
This system is needed because real time information about vehicle movement, speed and direction is of prime importance. The base station needs to track the vehicle at very short intervals because of the cost of the cargo involved.
An important feature of real time systems is the use of two-way communication between the vehicle and base station and vice versa. This feature could be effectively used for enhancements like added security in terms of programming door locking, vehicle stopping, transmission of distress signal by the driver of the vehicle. Advanced features like routing and navigation could also be provided.
Alternatively a cargo company could use a Hybrid System for Fleet Management for increasing cost effectiveness and at the same time enabling advanced management techniques.
A cargo company may not want real time tracking of vehicle at small intervals but it could require the location, speed and direction data for advanced analyses and reports. Therefore polling of location data could be done at longer intervals of 2-3 hours and when the vehicle returns to the base station the entire onboard data could be uploaded for detailed analyses.
RMSI Case Study
LBS as a rapidly emerging domain was exciting for RMSI, who was already a lead player in the GIS solutions. Here was an area that could combine our expertise with new and emerging technologies. The clear opportunity that LBS offered, prompted us towards developing a prototype that could test the viability of new technologies like GPS-GSM in the area of Fleet Management System.
We envisaged an application that could keep track of any vehicle and display its location and other attributes on a map. It could also be customised to determine the frequency of message passing between the application and the vehicle.
Architecture of RMSI Case Study
The team at RMSI chose to build the case study using the technology of GPS and GSM after evaluating its benefits over the other ingredients of a Fleet Management System. Plotting of location data on high-resolution maps required a rich map database, which consisted of digital street maps.
The architecture involves GPS and GSM integrated devices for identifying the location and messaging between the vehicle and the application. Refer to Figure 1 for the architecture. The GPS device over the moving vehicle calculates the location, speed, date and time information. The information gets stored on the GSM device and in turn sent to the control center through the GMS. The GSM receiver at RMSI end decodes this data through the decoder. The transmitted information is sent to a mapping engine that plots the route of the vehicle on a digital street map of the city. This data from the decoder is also stored in the database so that plotting can also be done on the click of a button for a particular vehicle, at a convenient time.
Salient Features
- Real time tracking of the vehicle
- Ability to store the data for convenient use
- Query facility to identify information for a location tracked on the map
- All generic mapping features like Zoom in, Zoom out, Pan, Full Extent
- Generation of MIS reports for location tracking and speed analysis
- Customisation of frequency of message passing
- Fully workable solution
The RMSI case study proved to be a successful developmental effort with GPS-GSM working well and as expected. It effectively used the already available GIS expertise and helped us to gain grounds on Location based technologies. We are convinced that LBS and Fleet Management System is a real opportunity with workable technologies in place.
Conclusion
The opportunities created by Fleet Management Systems are immense and it is likely to have a far-reaching impact. For the GIS solution providers like us, this provides the opportunity of taking the power of GIS technologies and blending it with new systems to gain wider grounds.
With the success of the case study we felt that GPS-GSM is viable solution for a Fleet Management System because of its universal appeal to all scenarios whether within city limits or covering remote areas. Smart Devices could be a very good option for fixed route Fleet services, which do not require real time tracking of vehicle because of its cost effectiveness. However, for the consumer and the implementers a careful understanding of service requirements, availability of technologies and the economics will define the kind of and the alternatives of a Fleet Management System to be used.