2010
Resource Tracking System
By:
Sohaib Masood
Taimoor Zubair
IBA
1
Software Document:
You are also required to send us a document that contains the following information regarding
your project:
1. Description of the project (Minimum 500 words - maximum 1.5 pages)
This section includes the information of what the project is all about, technologies and platforms
used in this project.
2. Design of the application
This section will contain the complete diagrams of system design and architecture.
3. Process Flow Diagram
In this section, you have to provide a diagram, which will show the triggering event(s),
sequential flow of process steps, decision points, and deliverable or outcome of a single
process.
4. Application of the system
This section will contain the complete details of, where this project can be used, what are its
benefits, and who are the targeted users of the project.
5. Market worth of the system
This section will describe that how powerful is the project in term of market need and usage.
This document should be sent to softcomp@softec.org.pk along with your registration reference
number.
The highlighted sections are complete.
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Table of Contents
Description of the project.............................................................................................................................. 4
Application of the system ............................................................................................................................. 7
Tracking Police Vehicles and Fire Brigades: ............................................................................................ 7
Tracking Sales Force: ............................................................................................................................... 7
Tracking Delivery Riders:......................................................................................................................... 8
Reasons for using our system: .................................................................................................................. 8
Market worth of the system .......................................................................................................................... 9
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Description of the project
The aim of this project is to develop a software system that is capable of tracking down
individuals and other resources (vehicles etc) using cell phones. Resources can be tracked in real
time using cell phones which have a GPRS connection enabled. The tracking will be done by the
help of a mobile application which runs in the background, and constantly updates the location of
the phone on to a web based database. The co ordinates are updated on the database in real time,
which are then fetched from the database to show the exact location of the resource on a map.
The team members have carried out extensive research on the internet and consulted many
notable organizations for the feasibility of this project. As per the discretion of the team, Edhi
Ambulance Services were chosen as the venue for the first implementation. For this reason the
team members went to the Edhi Ambulance Centre, in Kharadar Karachi to get familiar with the
existing process and to get a feedback whether the proposed system will be beneficial for the
organization.
According to a representative at the Edhi Centre each city is divided into different zones and
each zone has an office (in terms of infrastructure and a concrete building). The zones are then
divided into cells, which are wooden cabins placed on convenient locations and account for 5-10
ambulances depending upon the importance of their location. There are approximately 12 zones
and 56 cells in Karachi.
Currently, the system works in a manner whereby all calls to an emergency number (115) are
recorded on a software system and their location is printed out on the server. The rest of the work
of assigning (an ambulance to an emergency/patient) and tracking an ambulance is done
manually. When somebody calls 115, the name and address of the person is printed and the
volunteer at the Edhi Ambulance Control Centre (EACC) notifies the concerned zone. It is
important to note that this is done based on the intelligence of the volunteer, about which area
falls under what zone. Once the zone office is notified, the zone office in charge notifies a cell to
dispatch an ambulance or if the location is nearby the zone office, the volunteer dispatches one
from his office. Again it is up to the discretion of the zone office in charge to dispatch
ambulances from his office or delegate the responsibility to a cell. All the delegation is done
using a wireless communication based on Radio Frequency and hence it takes time to broadcast a
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message to respective units. According to the official at EACC their response time is 4-5
minutes. Similarly, tracking is also done using the same method; all ambulances who have lost
contact with the EACC for over an hour are indicated by the software system. The EACC
volunteer then contacts the drivers of these ambulances about their whereabouts.
In this chaotic system, it seems a miracle that the system works. It does so because of the
countless dedicated Edhi Volunteers and people who have been associated with this cause for
years. And can now take decisions on their own without using modern days sophisticated
technology.
We aim to calm this chaotic system by bringing in the GPRS based tracking system, which relies
on modern day sophisticated technology and will offer increased reliability as compared to the
existing system. It will also help to reduce the response time and save precious human lives. This
will be ensured by recording all calls that are made to the emergency number are proposing
which ambulance should be dispatched based on the information in the system at that point in
time.
The system will be developed in ASP.net using C# in Visual Studio 2008. The database will be
developed in SQL Server 2008 and the hosting will be done on the university’s domain. Since,
all the development is being done using Microsoft tools to maintain the consistency the software
will only work on Windows Mobil based cell phones.
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Application of the system
The project is not only useful for the ambulance tracking but it can be extended into various
other use cases. A few examples where it can be successfully implemented are listed below:

Tracking Police Vehicles and Fire Brigades

Tracking Sales Force

Tracking Delivery Riders
A detailed description of each the avenues mentioned above is as follows:
Tracking Police Vehicles and Fire Brigades:
It is an established fact that throughout Pakistan the response time of the law enforcement
agencies is quite slow as compared to other regions of the world. One of the most important
reasons for this delayed response is that the department usually does not have a clue as to where
a specific vehicle is at a point in time. Hence, they need to broadcast a message to certain
vehicles to ensure that at least one or more if required reach a destination where a law and order
situation prevails.
Therefore, in order to increase the efficiency of the response time of the law enforcement
agencies, we propose that our system should be used at town level, where all police resources are
tracked at the police station. So that when an emergency call is received the staff at the police
station knows exactly where their resources are and which one’s should be deployed. To further
increase the efficiency the system will also propose according to the position of the resources
that which one’s should be deployed to the distress call venue.
The similar use case can be extended to the fire department.
Tracking Sales Force:
Sales force management is a primary concern for most businesses. As a result most businesses
spent fortunes in managing their sales force efficiently. By using our system companies will be
able to manage their sales force more efficiently by tracking their movements. The data from the
system can be used for measuring the performance of the sales force. Individual productivity will
increase, which will eventually contribute to the revenues of the company.
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Tracking Delivery Riders:
Most businesses like courier services, fast food chains and other resellers employ people to
deliver goods to their clients. It is difficult for them to keep a track of every resource and their
location in real time, plus any confusion in travelling and delivering goods has to be solved on
the phone with estimates of the whereabouts of the resource. Therefore, instead of relying on the
traditional means of solving problem, such businesses can employ our tracking system to ensure
that they know all about their delivery force.
Reasons for using our system:
There are numerous reasons why this system should be deployed at these avenues. A few of
them include, that authorities will know the whereabouts of their resources at all times, help can
be provided to the suffering people quickly by reducing the response time in case of law
enforcement and public services, there will be no need to broadcasting the details of the events to
every resource instead only the concerned resources will be notified hence it will save energy,
communicating costs, human resource and other resources. On the other hand for businesses it
will be effective to use this system in order to track the performance of their human resource, for
example, it is seen quite often that insurance agents and other sales agents achieve their targets in
a few days while they rest on the others. They are paid for the entire month; hence, resources are
not working at their optimal efficiency level. If they will be tracked the authorities will know
exactly which human resource is located where at specific times. Therefore, the sales force
management can become easier.
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Market worth of the system
With the increased use of cell phones it is evident that today cell phones have become a
necessity. In Pakistan, the use of cell phones has increased drastically over the past few years.
According to the Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA), Pakistan is ranked fifth in the world in
terms of cell phone subscribers. The number of cell phone subscribers in Pakistan has reached to
9.732 million in February 2010.
(http://www.pta.gov.pk/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=583).
In principle, our system can track anyone with a cell phone, our software and an active GPRS
connection. Although at this point in time it is limited only to the Windows Mobil platform, it
will later be coded into other mobile based operating systems. Hence, anyone with the above
criteria is part of our extended market. The core market will consist of businesses and law
enforcement agencies that have a practical use to track resources.
Today, tracking services are being offered in Pakistan mostly for vehicle tracking, the concept of
human resource tracking is yet to surface on a wide scale. Therefore, the need of the product is
evident to businesses who want to streamline and improve their business processes. Like
mentioned earlier, all business that need to track resources and measure the performance of their
human resource are part of the target market.
The advantages that our proposed system has over its rivals is that it is cheaper than the GPS
based tracking system, no sophisticated material needs to be attached with the human or other
resource, tracking will be done by the use of cell phones and that the efficiency of the system in
predicting a location is less than 0.2 KM*.
As a result, due to the low recurring cost it will be feasible for most businesses. Furthermore,
another added advantage is that the company will not have to spend a fortune on the initial cost,
as the cell phones of the work force can be used to keep a track of them.
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