Too Much GPS Data Can Inhibit Fleet Management Reporting

Managing data well is the main game in fleet management today. Companies need to tread carefully because excessive administration of vehicle use can quickly lead to staff communication problems and waste.

At the same time, the massive amount of information that is being generated by Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers in vehicles can lead to organisations having too much data and not enough answers. 

GPS is a US government-maintained satellite navigation system that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. The system assists military, civil and commercial users around the world and is accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver.

Depending upon the position update rate, a fleet of 50 cars equipped with GPS can generate a huge amount of data, including information about the location, speed, performance and maintenance situation of vehicles. Distilling this information down and making good use of it is often a reporting challenge, according to the director of research and communications at the Australasian Fleet Managers Association, Ken Thompson.  Too much data can be as much of a problem as too little data - since a fleet manager needs to review and understand the implication of the data - such as where a vehicle has been, and where it has stopped as well as how fast it has been moving.  Redundant data can make this analysis a significant challenge.

Thompson says GPS-generated data is particularly effective in monitoring vehicle efficiency and safety.

He says some organisations put GPS sensors into vehicles that are commonly used in remote locations so they know exactly where the vehicle is at all times.

“GPS is also used to monitor the speed of vehicles – if staff are working on unmade roads and are limited to a speed limit 40 kilometers an hour because of the roads, a connection can be made through the GPS to tell the organisation the speed limit has been exceeded,” he says. “If you have a vehicle that is carrying valuable material, for instance, you can geo-fence that. You can set parameters about the physical area in which it can operate. If the vehicle moves out of the area, then a report is sent to the organisation.”

Automated management systems are now widely used to co-ordinate vehicle maintenance and driver education.

Using fleet telematics companies can work to ensure that the right ­vehicles are used for specific tasks, and that costs and ­accident rates are reduced, by introducing reward recognition for good performance.

Speaking at a recent meeting of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, Malcolm urged fleet operators to encourage the discussion of fleet and driver performance matters at sales meetings. Employees can also be tested on road rules and provided with driver education awareness updates with online tools, he says.

Online risk management tools are an effective way of reducing accidents and gathering data to identify problem areas around company cars. But employers who think they can simply install a flashy intranet system and then forget about their duty of care responsibilities are mistaken. Risk management tools help organisations assess risk. But under Australia’s occupational health and safety regulations, the responsibility remains with the employer.

To protect themselves from potential litigation, employers need to combine online education with one-on-one driver training, including refresher training, and have measurable processes within a written policy that applies to all employees.

“One of the most powerful driver education tools is private coaching,” Malcolm says. “Drivers sit with a coach who observes them, and asks why they are drinking coffee while driving, or why they are following too close [to the vehicle in front].”

Automated maintenance management systems are also having a significant positive impact on the bottom line.

Technological changes in once-overlooked maintenance facilities and regional fleet centers are spreading through the entire enterprise, leaving productivity and profitability improvements in their wake.

Some parts and pieces of today’s maintenance management solutions have been around for decades.

What is changing the game when it comes to impact is the integration of various technology tools to create a seamless flow of asset management data that has the power to move maintenance from a reactive function to a predictive-based function.

For the past decade, the focus of fleet managers has been on taking all the different sources of maintenance-related data – including data from on-board vehicle sensors and motor industry supplier systems – and aggregating them.

The entire order-to-delivery process is being automated in many fleets. The aim is to join up all the dots so that everything from bills for material, to the maintenance work order, to the mechanic in the shop, to parts inventory management, to accounts payable is integrated. Thompson says the use of GPS is allowing certain transport operators to embrace a truly predictive maintenance world. He says public bus operators in the US use GPS to monitor how many times a bus door is opened. The gathered information is then deployed to pre-plan the maintenance and tire-change programs, according to whether a bus route involves frequent or infrequent stopping.

The great advantage of predictive maintenance regimes is that logic can be applied to data to create probabilities of failures. In doing this, fleet asset utilization is kept high.

Some information in this report was provided by the Financial Review: 

The Rise of Wearable Tech

Shipments of Wearable Technology Devices will Reach 64 Million in 2017

As reported by GIS User: According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, sales of smart glasses, smart watches and wearable fitness trackers reached 8.3 million units worldwide in 2012, up from 3.1 million devices in the previous year. Growing at a compound annual growth rate of 50.6 percent, total shipments of wearable technology devices are expected to reach 64.0 million units in 2017. Today wearable fitness and activity trackers constitute the vast majority of the shipments. By the end of the forecast period, smart watches are predicted to incorporate much of the functionality of these and will then be the largest wearable device segment.

“A perfect storm of innovation within low power wireless connectivity, sensor technology (such as GPS), big data, cloud services, voice user interfaces and mobile computing power is coming together and paves the way for connected wearable technology” said Johan Svanberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. The first generation of products appeal to specific markets and certain use cases, but refinement in design, technology and connectivity will broaden application areas and speed up market adoption. Initially, the wrist is the most attractive location for wearable devices, which is shown by the success of the Pebble smart watch and the popularity of wristband activity trackers such as the Nike Fuelband and the Fitbit Flex. “However, today’s devices need to evolve into something more than single purpose fitness trackers or external smartphone notification centers in order to be truly successful” continues Mr. Svanberg. Berg Insight predicts that wearable technology will shift from being smartphone accessories into becoming proper stand-alone computing devices. Furthermore, closeness to the body and always aware capabilities will enable them to be more than merely miniaturized smartphones.

Google, Sony and Samsung have already launched products and other major players such as Apple and LG are expected to soon enter the market. Wide market availability of wearable devices also raises privacy concerns. “It is still uncertain where lines should be drawn, but as in the case with most new technology, individual users and solution providers have the responsibility not to misuse the capabilities enabled by wearable tech” concludes Mr. Svanberg.

Scientists to use GPS to Track Bumblebees

As reported by KWG: Imagine a GPS unit small and light enough to fit on the back of a bumblebee. Researchers down at Oregon State University plan to build one.

Researchers often use sensors to track species like birds or fish. The OSU scientists hope to use that same technology on a much tinier scale to track local bumblebee populations.

Entomology professor Sujaya Rao is leading the effort.

Rao wants to track the bees to find out why worldwide the key pollinator is in decline.

Without bee pollination, Rao says about a third of the food we eat wouldn't even be around.
So Rao teamed up with engineers at the University and together they are now working to develop a mini wireless tracking device that could be glued to the back of the insect.

“We can then figure out ways to build their populations, to sustain their populations, to make sure they will be here even though the landscape is always changing,” Rao said.

The $500,000 research project is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Rao says it will likely take another two years before the miniature wireless sensors are built, but she's confident her research will help revolutionize how we study bees in the future.

GPS vs. Reality: Believe Your Eyes

As reported by Consumer Affairs: There’s an old joke where a wife catches her husband in bed with another woman (or vice-versa) and the cheating spouse has the chutzpah to deny everything: “What? There’s nobody else in bed with me right now! You did not just see a naked stranger jump out from under the covers, throw on some clothes and run out of here. 

I've never cheated on you! Who’re you gonna believe — me, or your own lying eyes?”

But for the twenty-first century, maybe we should update that joke to apply to GPS systems: “When you look out your car window, you see a deserted beach next to a vast ocean. But I, your GPS, say it’s actually a well-traveled multi-lane highway. Who’re you gonna believe — me, or your own lying eyes?”

Unfortunately, too many drivers in such situations choose to believe the GPS. This happened most recently in Douglas County, Oregon, on Sept. 28, when the sheriff’s department got a call from an elderly couple whose RV got stuck in the mud on a deserted, unpaved logging road. Their GPS had suggested they leave the Interstate and take a shortcut through the wilderness.

Of course, elderly drivers aren’t the only ones prone to being fooled by their GPS systems. In 2011, a young woman in Washington State drove her SUV into a lake after she and her GPS mistook a boat launch for a road.  Other stories from that year include the man in New Jersey who blamed his GPS after he drove his car off the road and into a house, and the Pennsylvania woman who blamed hers for the head-on crash she caused while driving north in a southbound lane.

Indeed, bad-GPS-direction stories are becoming downright commonplace. Just last week, an Alaskan airport had to put up barricades after clueless iPhone users fooled by a flaw in Apple Maps data kept driving onto one of its runways.

Therefore, even though we are not psychic, we still feel pretty confident in predicting “Sometime in the next month, more ‘drivers get lost following bad GPS advice’ stories will appear in the news.” To make sure these headlines aren't about you, remember: if the road signs say one thing and the GPS says something else, ignore the GPS Navigation device and trust in the testimony of your own lying eyes.

Firefighting Crews Should Have GPS Help

As reported by the Yuma Sun: When firefighters are working on wildfires, one would assume that those crews are equipped with the best, latest technology to keep them safe.

However, the investigation into the deaths of the 19 firefighters near Yarnell in June has shown that isn't always the case.

Investigators have said one way to keep firefighters safe in the future is with GPS tracking technology.

“Real-time information on the location of crews and the location of the fire, if those two things had been known, this accident could have been prevented,” said Bill Grabbert, a retired wildland firefighter, fire management officer and author, said in a recent Associated Press article.

Given the prevalence of GPS technology now, especially in smartphones, it’s unfathomable that it isn't being used to keep firefighters safe.

Officials have said that proper procedures were followed in Yarnell. But the report notes that when the hotshot crew died, an air-tanker was circling overhead. The command center thought the crew had decided to stay put, and the air-tanker was confused about their location, the AP reported.

GPS technology isn't perfect. According to GPS.gov, which is the U.S. government’s official website about the Global Positioning System, high quality GPS systems, combined with augmentation systems, can pinpoint real-time positions to within centimeters.

But, there are factors that can impact that accuracy, such as atmospheric conditions and the quality of the receiver.

However, wouldn't that technology be worth every penny? The payoff would be two-fold – better accuracy in firefighting, and, most important, protecting the lives of wildland firefighters.

For the families of the 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots, there isn't anything that can be done to bring back their loved ones. And because of 30 minutes of radio silence prior to their deaths, many questions will be left unanswered.

But from their tragedy, officials can make changes to help protect other wildland crews in the future.

The next step should be equipping wildland firefighting teams with the best technology to keep them as safe as possible.

Insurance Privacy Collision: Data On How You Drive Can Reveal Where You Drive

As reported by ComputerWorld: If you haven’t heard of them before, use-based insurance (or so-called “Pay as You Drive” or PAYD) programs are all the rage in the auto insurance industry. They make a lot of sense: rather than penalize good drivers for the crummy driving of others (by averaging overall accident stats across a region), leverage on-board technology within the insured vehicle to monitor the miles traveled, speed, braking and other vital statistics to pinpoint good and bad drivers.

The technology allows infrequent, safe drivers to pay much lower premiums, while drivers who rack up tens of thousands of miles a month, or career around the roads at breakneck speeds to pay premiums that are appropriate given the amount of driving and their behavior behind the wheel. Insurers either install their own hardware in the automobile (like Progressive Insurance’s Snapshot program), or work with companies like OnStar that already have tracking and telematics hardware installed.

Most insurance companies who offer these programs are careful to say that they don’t record GPS data that tracks the movements of policy holders, or track their whereabouts. But researchers at the University of Denver show in newly published research that drivers’ movements are easily derived from the data insurance companies do collect, including vehicle speed, turns, time traveled and information such as traffic stops. The researchers found that “a number of trips can be geographically matched to their destination using simple driving features.”

A team of researchers at the University of Denver’s Department of Computer Science consisting of Rinku Dewri, Prasad Annadata, Wisam Eltarjaman and Ramakrishna Thurimella found that driving metrics, like other sensor data, can be highly revealing about individual behavior when collected in bulk. Their study used a commercial tracking device that was capable of collecting the time, driving speed and distance traveled. They then observed automobiles in the Denver area over a period of 15 days, comprising 30 trips ranging from 1 mile to 25 miles. 

With knowledge just of the origin of a trip, they found, they could accurately predict the destination of the journey absent any GPS data. They accomplished this using a strategy they called “stop-point matching,” on the theory that the pattern of stop points from a known origin will be more or less unique for any location, unless the layout of streets is very regular (such as Manhattan’s grid layout.)

The study could raise important data privacy questions for the (many) “pay as you drive” programs now being piloted, or offered to drivers – not to mention other programs that seek to match remote sensors and real-time monitoring with products and services. The data points collected by these remote sensing devices are what the researchers call “quasi-identifiers” – attributes that are “non-identifying by themselves, but can be used to unique identify individuals when used in combination with other data.”

Their findings align with other research, including a study by scientists at MIT and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, which found that mobile device data from just four, randomly chosen “spatio-temporal points” (for example, mobile device pings to carrier antennas) was enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals studied based on their pattern of movement alone.

The research doesn't suggest that PAYD programs should be banned – but it does put the onus on insurance companies to disclose the potential privacy implications of data collection to their customers.


“Privacy advocates have presumed the existence of location privacy threats in non-tracking telematics data collection practices; our work shows that the threats are real,” the authors say. 

“Enough information should be conveyed to consumers so that an informed decision can be made.”