Indian schools test monitoring student movements via ID cards
30 March, 2018
category: Security
A new system is being tested at schools in Kolkata, India that leverage Wi-Fi, Bluetooth beacons and GPS functionality to track the movement of students while on campus. The reason for the initiative is to better ensure student safety while on school premises.
As reported by the New Indian Express, the system was presented to a select group of private school principals in the city, and will see students wear standard ID cards whose data can be sent to a series of connected gateways to detect the student’s presence. Device manufacturer Future Netwings Solutions is the company delivering the system.
Future Netwings’ Hipla Smart Campus offering promises to be a comprehensive solution that manages student movement along with food ordering and a back end analysis system. The system also manages a campus’ attendance system, tracking student locations both in and out of classrooms, as well as the time of attending sessions.
“If a student has unusual movement in a secluded area, alerts are generated immediately and cameras are activated,” said Jaideep Chakrabarti, chief executive officer of Future Netwings Solutions in a New Indian Express interview. “The gateways are deployed across the campus in a network of Bluetooth Beacons, WiFi and GPS, and will receive data from ID cards and transmit that to the Cloud, which in turn would trigger alerts, notifications.”
Hipla Smart Campus is attempting to expand on the standard CCTV surveillance model by circumventing hours of video footage that may or may not contain any valuable information. Instead the solution aims to provide real time, actionable intelligence and reporting based on specific student movements.
While admittedly not a magic-bullet solution, school administrators have admitted that the system will at least assist school authorities in better ensuring that students remain in the more secure environment of campus during school hours.
