IIT Roorkee develops mobile app to locate coronavirus suspects

Dehradun: The IIT Roorkee has developed a mobile tracking application endowed with state-of-the-art features to boost government efforts for the surveillance of coronavirus suspects. The application can track the COVID-19 suspects who have been quarantined through the geofencing technology, which marks a virtual geographic area and triggers a response if an individual exits or enters the boundary.

The system will get an alert, if geofencing is violated by the quarantined person, Prof Kamal Jain from the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Roorkee, said.

In case the GPS data is not received, the location will be obtained automatically through the triangulation of mobile towers.


If the Internet is not working in a certain area, the location will be received through SMS.

If the application gets off, an alert will be received immediately.

The location of the person can be received by sending an SMS to the device. It allows the sharing of quarantined persons/places photographs on a Google map, uploading geotag image to a server.

Furthermore, administrators can view all reports on a map.

If installed on the mobile of the affected person, it can provide a history of all people in his vicinity for a defined period.

"The tracking system allows for state-of-the-art surveillance during COVID-19. Besides facilitating quarantine management, it helps overcome overcrowding at any location by issuing an alert to the predefined agency. This is our small step to supplement government efforts in these testing times," Jain said.