New app scans countless pics, alerts of quarantine violations

Violating ‘quarantine’ could be devastating for the community, desperately trying to evade the dreaded Covid-19 virus. But how can such violations be tracked when numbers surge? Promising to do exactly this, a city-based telecom firm, astTECS has now offered the government a free, cloud-based solution.

In recent weeks, the number of people with travel history and under home-quarantine has surged. Lockdowns and geographical area containments are becoming the new normal. Tracking such citizens manually has already become nearly impossible.

So, here is how astTECS’ solution works: The interface is through an Android-based mobile application in two forms, astTRAC and astTRIM, both designed to help law enforcement agencies keep a check on quarantine violators. Linked to a centralised sensor, the Apps work on data sourced through the cloud.

As astTECS Managing Director, Devasia Kurian explained, those under quarantined will have to download and login to the astTRAC App. “This will send periodic notifications to the law enforcement officers about the location of the user and if he/she has violated the home quarantine in the form of WhatsApp, SMS, email.”

To ensure that the quarantined person is at home, the App alerts him/her to upload their photos periodically. A cloud-based sensor tracks these images, negating the need to manually browse through hundreds and thousands of pictures sent on WhatsApp. Along with the image, the astTRAC App automatically captures the home location.

On their part, the law enforcement officers will use the astTRIM to view all users assigned to them on a live map. “Data of users, along with their name, phone number and last known location will be pinned onto a map. Calls can directly be initiated to the quarantined person by just clicking on their name for ease of communication,” elaborated Kurian.

Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar had, on March 30, announced that quarantined people would be required to send their selfies every hour to government officials through an App. The process had to be repeated from 7 am to 10 pm. The app would also send the GPS coordinates to help officials verify the person’s location.

The astTECS officials said this would generate thousands of images when quarantine cases mount. The flood of images would be near impossible to track manually if number of cases rise exponentially. Automating the process through a centralised server is the answer, they
maintained.