A PLATFORM FOR RAPID DEPLOYMENT OF MOBILE ASSET MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
Mr. Suen Lee and Prof. Yang Gao
Department of Geomatics Engineering
The University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N IN4
sulee@ucalgary.ca; gao(@geomatics.ucalgary.ca
KEY WORDS: GIS, Internet/Web, Management, Data Mining, Web based, Tracking
ABSTRACT:
In recent years, the convergence of location, information management and communication technologies have created an emerging
market known as location-based service (LBS). LBS is a critical enabling technology using location as a filter to extract relevant
information to provide value-added services. Mobile Asset Management System (MAMS) is one such service and has been rapidly
gaining attention from corporations and individuals. A MAMS offers timely and relevant information necessary for informed
decisions on efficient asset management, increasing productivity, profitability, safety and security. Despite there being a diverse
array of potential applications, all MAMS share common elements such as data collection from remote assets, wireless
communication for transmitting data from the assets to a central office back-end for storage, and software application to provide
services to interested users. If these elements are recreated for every new MAMS, as is generally the case today, then significant time
and resources will be wasted through duplication. Trving to tie the heterogeneous components into a MAMS has been a challenge
for LBS developers. To overcome these obstacles, technologies that provide the common elements and fundamental functions have
been investigated and developed at The University of Calgary. Heterogeneous components such as sensors, wireless networks and
databases have been integrated into a single Development Platform which can become a foundation and is an innovative solution to
numerous and diverse MAMS system development and for other LBS applications. By featuring an object-oriented, extensible and
modular architecture, developers can choose the functions from the platform to use in their applications, extend or customize other
functions and add their own specialized software applications when necessary. Technical details of the platform will be described
along with field test results in applications to vehicle tracking for safety and security monitoring.
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1] Background
Advances in widespread, robust and inexpensive location and
wireless communication technologies have resulted in an
explosion of activities in the field of Location Based Services
(LBS). Timely and relevant information enables informed
decision-making and offers improvements for productivity,
safety and security. One particular form of LBS, known as
Mobile Asset Management System (MAMS) has garnered
significant interest from corporations desiring more efficient
methods in managing their asset fleets. Other promising
applications include personal vehicle monitoring and security
systems. To be an effective tool, à MAMS must be capable of
aiding or performing operational decision-making. It must be
able to differentiate between dissimilar assets, seamlessly
handle spatial and non-spatial data. It must be capable of
collecting and storing information from the field and process
the data to and from numerous databases for data retricval,
editing, analysis, presentation and decision-making functions.
The impetus for LBS came out of the demands of the United
State's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for
cellular operators to be able to provide the position of any
cellular devices operating on their network to public emergency
services, accurate to within 125 meters, as part of their
Enhanced 911 program [Prasad, 2001][FCC, 2003].
Technologies developed for accurate positioning via cellular
network or phone to provide emergency locations can also be
used for new and innovative applications. Devices integrating
wireless and positioning capabilities could be attached to
vehicles and assets for monitoring. Mining operations utilize
numerous and varied assets spread over a wide work area in
their operations and would greatly benefit from the deployment
of an effective MAMS into their operation. They could also be
used by consumers to determine nearby points of interests or
receive relevant information, using location-aware cellular
phones or other wireless devices. For these reasons, along with
expectations of rapid growth [Prasad, 2001], LBS has received
significant attention from industry, users and providers.
1.2 Development Platform
In this paper, a location aware Development Platform in
support of MAMS and other LBS applications will be
presented. This Platform helps augment MAMS development
by providing critical functionality required in a MAMS type
applications, allowing developers to reuse these functionality
and maximize their time and resources on the unique aspects of
their applications. The intent is to have a platform that can
become an engine for LBS development. While MAMS is the
primary application for the Platform, it will remain flexible
enough so that it could also be extended to other LBS activities
in the future. This Platform will offer important low-level
functions that developers can utilize as an important foundation
for their enterprise MAMS applications and feature an open
architecture, so that it can be utilized by third parties. À system
developed with the Platform will also be presented along with
field and simulated testing results.
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