Smartphones as elements of crowd tracking

Modern smartphones are crammed with all sorts of sensors, equipped with a pair of cameras and at least one microphone. Most of the time, all these components are not used. But what if you could constantly remove data from them, aggregate and analyze? That's right from all the smartphones in the city. Depending on the time of day, the routes and the nature of the movement of residents can tell a lot of useful things for urban planning, emergency prevention, transport development, business and many other tasks.

With the help of the tracking device you can get a lot of various information about a person and the environment in which he is located. Remember, last summer in the Chinese city of Tianjin a warehouse of chemical products exploded , which were stored in violation of all sorts of rules.


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As a result of this man-made disaster, 173 people died, several hundred more were injured. These are mainly warehouse staff and residents of houses located close to the warehouse. And what if they all had been warned in advance about the dangerous accumulation of explosive substances in dangerous proximity to them? Or about the state of nitrocellulose, which dried up and caught fire, which was the cause of the explosion? Such alerts could be generated automatically based on the analysis of large arrays of various information collected from various sensors and wearable tracking devices. Actually, the most important task of the tracking system should be the preservation of human life and health.

Perfect tracker

What information should a hypothetical ideal tracker collect?

• Obviously, in the first place - the current location of its owner. This can be done using satellite navigation systems - GPS, GLONASS, etc., - networks of mobile operators, WiFi-points.
• The level of ambient lighting can be transmitted from the photo sensor if the device is made, for example, in the form of a bracelet. Illumination unusual for a given place and time of day may indicate an explosion flash, light from a fire flame, or smoke.
• The gyroscope and the acceleration sensor are needed to register the change in the position of the device in space and the speed with which it is done. Perhaps a person is running from danger, or he was thrown away by a blast wave. Or maybe he just fell from a height.
• Of course, you need a temperature sensor. Given the characteristics of this place, the high temperature can talk about both fire and the danger of fire.
• Perhaps a barometer to determine the current pressure and height above sea level. First of all, this data will help to more accurately determine the location of a person in space. A sharp change in pressure will indicate an explosive wave. A gradual drop in pressure can be a “bell” before weather deteriorates.
• The microphone allows you to record the level and nature of noise, as well as the dynamics of its change. Audio data from different trackers can help determine the epicenter of an emergency, the presence of rain or wind.
• Taking into account modern technological risks, it is also useful to equip a hypothetical tracker with sensors of harmful substances and a dosimeter.

This whole set of sensors would allow one to get some idea of ​​the current conditions at a given point in space. If the warehouse staff in Tianjin carried such trackers, the monitoring system could detect a dangerous increase in the concentration of certain substances in the air in time and issue an early warning. Actually, this is true for most industrial facilities. “Ideal” trackers would turn the people wearing them into dynamic elements of comprehensive monitoring.

New application for smartphones

Most modern smartphones are already equipped with most of the above sensors. That is, in the hands of the population of the whole world already have billions of ready-made tracking devices. Albeit not equipped with a full set of sensors, but still able to measure a lot of parameters, and most importantly - a lot of them. In fact, the global smartphone park can be viewed as a ready-made global tracking and monitoring system distributed in space.

Crowdracking can be useful not only in manufacturing. If it were possible to remove information from the sensors of all these devices, centrally accumulate it and analyze it, this would allow preserving the life and health of many people, as well as improve the quality of life in cities.

Of course, first of all, the use of crowd-tracking, as an early warning in the areas of possible natural disasters, comes to mind. For example, early weak vibrations of the soil and buildings may be precursors to earthquakes. The relatively rapid drop in pressure and air temperature are markers of an impending storm. Data from smartphones that are already in the zone of violent disaster or man-made disaster can be used to determine the nature of the emergency, the boundaries of the danger zone and their change, which will warn all who are nearby to keep them away. At the same time, it will be possible to more accurately predict the possible damage, the number of victims and the resources necessary to save people and curb the environment.



For example, a set of data such as a sharp change in speed, the presence of loud short-term noise and coordinates, indicating that the smartphone is on the roadway and is stationary, or is moving extremely slowly, with a high degree of probability indicates an accident. The analysis system could quickly recognize such information patterns and notify the police, as well as place the appropriate label on the map services, warning other drivers about possible jams.

By the way, thanks to crowd tracking, one could raise a system for monitoring road congestion to a new level. If practically every participant of the movement reports their coordinates and speed of movement, then the accuracy and detail of the assessment of traffic flows would increase significantly. And this would allow much more efficiently managing the traffic lights system and traffic services resources. Smartphones trackers would help improve the management of public transport, because the statistics of movement of people during the day would allow a more accurate assessment of passenger traffic during the day.



Although smartphones do not have a CO2 sensor, data on the concentration of cars on the roads and the wind rose in a particular area would help warn people of a possible increase in air pollution. Although it would be better to start equipping smartphones with a suitable sensor. Great help in monitoring the level of air pollution would be played by equipping public transport with appropriate sensors.

True, the logic suggests that it is even better to use more environmentally friendly cars.

Crowdracking would be invaluable in combating the spread of dangerous diseases. If an outbreak of a disease is registered somewhere, then the movement of smartphones can accurately determine the possible ways of spreading the infection, taking preventive measures at the site or setting effective quarantine. It will also be possible to superimpose patterns of population transfer on the habitat maps of potential carriers of various ailments. This use of crowd-tracking is especially useful in warm countries where there is a high risk of spreading diseases like malaria , dengue fever and other misfortunes. In areas where there is a high risk of infection, it would be possible to send warnings “by area”, post information boards and mobile medical stations in public places. As a result, it would be possible to greatly reduce the number of cases, which will result in great savings, both direct and indirect.

Of course, crowtracking would have many other, more life-affirming applications. For example, analyzing the statistics of movement of people would help to identify those places that are most often visited by local residents or tourists. This would help to better develop the tourism business, as well as urban and social infrastructure, because these two groups of people have different interests, needs, behavioral patterns and solvency.

Towards a brighter future

You can come up with a myriad of useful and useful crowtracking applications. But first you have to solve a number of serious problems.

Opponents of crowdtracking will rightly point out that audio and video data, in conjunction with movement data, may not be used at all for good purposes. This is what a temptation for Big Brother! For example, data from smartphones may well be used not only to combat terrorists, but also to identify "unauthorized crowds of citizens."



Even if one assumes crystal honesty and integrity of state officials, who should be the only recipient of raw data from citizens' smartphones, there remains the risk of data leakage as a result of the actions of intruders. We are already beginning to get used to the regular reports that a company has stolen a database with customer data. And how many such cases are hidden? Here we are talking about a full-scale population tracking system, information from which is likely to be the subject of attention of the special services of other states and terrorists. So, the issue of information security for crowtracking is fundamental to the implementation of this technology.

But even if it is possible to guarantee the safety and integrity of these data, you will have to convince the population of this. After all, crowtracking should be carried out exclusively on a voluntary basis, from each smartphone owner you need to get an explicit consent to provide information from the sensors of the device. And something suggests that many users will immediately disable this option.

There are crowd-tracking and technological barriers:

• First, regular polling of sensors and sending information will waste battery power. And modern smartphones and so often can not live a day without a charger.
• Secondly, it is difficult to estimate the amount of data that will need to be received and transmitted to the data center. The current capacity of the networks of mobile operators is not even close enough if tens of millions of smartphones suddenly begin to send telemetry packets regularly.
• Thirdly, for the rapid processing and analysis of all this data, you will have to build very powerful data centers. It is quite possible that at first we will have to limit ourselves to a very superficial analysis of the data obtained.

However, the potential gains from crowd-tracking can be large enough to recoup the costs of upgrading and expanding network and computing infrastructure over time. Although it is more likely that the development of this technology will be gradual. After all, users have yet to convince that we can all win if we turn our smartphones into trackers.