A WEB-BASED SYSTEM WITH REALTIME INFORMATION ON ASSET AND FLEET LOCATION AND CONDITION

Fleet owners and distribution agents face a myriad of challenges. These include crimes such as cargo theft and hijackings; vehicle misuse; and high costs of fuel, insurance and maintenance, including mechanical failures and power outages affecting traffic flow. The CSIR has developed a web-based integrative tool that is used as a virtual ‘operational command centre’ to provide information regarding personnel and vehicles for better management of assets, costs and delivery of services timeously and efficiently. The tool includes a 24/7/365 live tracking and monitoring capability of fleet diagnostics, health and status. This means one can assess the readiness of an asset for deployment in terms of its availability, service history and frequency of use and wear. The system architecture has extensibility capability to provide several situational awareness use cases beyond asset and fleet management, for example, in border control and disaster support deployments.

The system’s asset management option enables the management of complex warehouses, proving the location of essential equipment as well as their useful status. Mission planners thus have exact information on the location and status of critical equipment. The system, which includes security access control and business reporting on asset utilisation, also provides ease of integration into an organisation’s existing workflow and business processes through a novel gateway. The system provides free draw geo-fencing by customers, allowing users to dynamically select areas of interest, such as exclusion and inclusion zones for their vehicles and assets. Most products on the market have predefined geo-fences, particularly defined around crime hot spots, national borders and specific road terrains