In an effort to immediately track any violation of quarantine guidelines for COVID-19 set by the Tamil Nadu government, the state police has launched a mobile application to help with monitoring of residents. The application which will be downloaded onto the phones of people who are on quarantine will track the movements of those who have been placed under quarantine and send details of where they are to the police tracking them, every 15 minutes.
The application was ideated by engineer-turned-IPS officer and current Sivagangai Superintendent of Police Rohit Nathan and was developed by Chennai-based Pixxon AI solutions in just 48 hours. The idea was first part of the police officer's research paper which was read by higher authorities in the department who were impressed with the idea. He then met officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs two weeks ago, who gave the go ahead to bring the idea to life.
"The logic behind this app is that we don't spread police resources further than we already are. By monitoring these people via this technology, there is no need to expend officers who can be involved in other work," says the Superintendent of Police. "The application will show their range of movement and if they go beyond a certain distance, the police in the locality will be alerted. They are geo-fenced and the few who do not follow rules can easily be circled out," he adds.
The application was launched on Wednesday, right after the Chennai police booked four people, including a father-son duo for violating home quarantine rules. Moreover, the application was developed in just 48 hours, thanks to a dedicated tech team.
"We started on Sunday evening and it was ready to launch on Wednesday. The application uses GPS to track movements and the application will be made available to all quarantined people via SMS. We are right now in the process of sending the SMS to everyone," says T Muthu Kumar, the founder. "The Police and Health Department will monitor the data from it," he adds.
There are currently 15,492 people under quarantine in the state.