A geo-fence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area. A geo-fence could be dynamically generated--as in a radius around a store or point location, or a geo-fence can be a predefined set of boundaries, like school attendance zones or neighborhood boundaries.
The use of a geo-fence is called geo-fencing, and one example of usage involves a location-aware device of a location-based service (LBS) user entering or exiting a geo-fence. This activity could trigger an alert to the device's user as well as messaging to the geo-fence operator. This info, which could contain the location of the device, could be sent to a mobile telephone or an email account.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
History
Custom-digitized geofences have been in use since at least 2002 for multiple online mapping applications since their first appearance in research literature by Munson and Gupta. The term geofence itself is even older.
What Does Geofence Mean Video
Applications
Geofencing, used with child location services, can notify parents if a child leaves a designated area.
Geofencing used with locationized firearms can restrict those firearms to fire only in locations where their firing is permitted, thereby making them unable to be used elsewhere.
Geofencing is critical to telematics. It allows users of the system to draw zones around places of work, customer's sites and secure areas. These geo-fences when crossed by an equipped vehicle or person can trigger a warning to the user or operator via SMS or email.
In some companies, geofencing is used by the human resource department to monitor employees working in special locations especially those doing field works. Using a geofencing tool, an employee is allowed to log his or her attendance using a GPS-enabled device when within a designated perimeter.
Other applications include sending an alert if a vehicle is stolen and notifying rangers when wildlife stray into farmland.
Geo-fence can be used for location based messaging for tourist safety and communication.
Geofencing, in a security strategy model, provides security to wireless local area networks. This is done by using predefined borders, e.g., an office space with borders established by positioning technology attached to a specially programmed server. The office space becomes an authorized location for designated users and wireless mobile devices.
One expert in global positioning system security, and a politician, has suggested that government regulators should encourage drone manufacturers to build geofencing constraints into unmanned aerial vehicle navigation systems that would override the commands of the unsophisticated operator, preventing the device from flying into protected airspace.
Marketers can use geofencing by geofencing a retail store and sending a coupon to a customer with a mobile app that crosses the boundary. Similarly, different website content can be delivered based on the geographical location of website visitors using GeoFli.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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