How Wialon keeps children safe in Ukraine

Inteh-plus, a Gurtam partner in Ukraine, knows how to keep children safe and their parents composed using Wialon. Find the details below.

Background info

According to the National Police of Ukraine, 10,425 children were reported missing in 2018. Most of them were found within the next 24 hours, while the rest were put on the state list of missing people. However, there are always kids gone once and for all, like 28 boys and girls who were never found in 2018. This number seems tiny for a country with a population of 44 million people. But can you even start imagining what those ten thousand families had gone through before getting their babies back home? Let alone the parents who never got the chance to see their children again? Personal monitoring helps to minimize stress and makes the number of missing people approach zero. 

In 2017, together with OVERSEER, Inteh-plus experts offered a simple way to control children’s location and movements. The Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science and Kyiv Security Police supported the Child Safety Project.

The company specialists told us how everything began:

“We came up with the idea after another request by the police to provide them with personal trackers. For some years, they had been showing these trackers to kids and their parents before the start of the school year. The problem was that parents had to spend a lot when buying things for school and were not willing to pay for trackers on top of everything else. Besides, children tend to leave these trackers at home, unlike smartphones.”

How it works

WiaTag and Wialon Local

Today almost every kid has a smartphone, so why not use it as a tracker – with the help of WiaTag installed on it. Gurtam designed the app specifically for personal tracking.    

Geofences

Specialists connect the smartphone to Wialon Local and the Inteh-plus monitoring unit working 24/7. Then they create geofences (limited areas) along the kid’s usual route, which include home, school, sports club, music school, etc. The moment the child gets in/out of any of these areas, the system immediately notifies their parents about it.  

Parents, for their part, install the Wialon app for iOS and Android on their smartphones to track the kid in real time. Thus, they are always aware of the time he or she leaves school, goes to a private tutor or comes home.

In case the kid skipped the class and spent the entire afternoon hanging out at his friend’s place, the detailed track will reveal this to the parents. No more secrets about the children’s whereabouts.

24/7 monitoring unit

The monitoring unit is the place where operators keep track of all the messages from children’s smartphones connected to Wialon.

“It’s a separate facility with operators’ workplaces. Security companies and police control rooms throughout Ukraine have similar remote workplaces. Besides, thanks to the Ukrainian Federation of Security Professionals, we’ve made direct agreements with several security companies and Security Police regarding their immediate reaction to our emergency calls,” says Sergey Drobotay, CEO, Inteh-plus. 

SOS button

In case of emergency, a child can press the SOS button. Parents and operators will get the notification, locate the child on the map, and call the police or emergency response services. Due to Inteh-plus adjustments, the police, emergency response services, and security companies software can now receive these emergency notifications as well.

It seems like everything is under control now. But what is the plan when the smartphone battery is going down? No panic here! Parents can control the battery charge in WiaTag by selecting the appropriate working mode and enabling it on the kid’s phone remotely. Another option is to turn off the app for some time to save the battery charge.  

Advantages for parents

Together with peaceful family life, absence of worries through the day, and healthy nights’ sleep for parents, the solution ensures:

• the control of children’s routes and movements timing via the mobile app in real time;
• the option to create as many geofences as necessary; 
• the notification if a child leaves the geofence or presses the SOS button;
• the callout of the emergency response services by an operator;
• the instant locating of their child’s smartphone on the map. Note that the locating accuracy depends on the smartphone itself, too. Some devices provide more accurate information due to higher GPS-modules sensitivity (based on the phone components);
• control over the smartphone battery charge or enabling the saving mode;
• The app remote control on the children’s device.

Plans

To test the solution, find its possible downsides, and fix them, the partner launched the Child Safety Project only in Kyiv so far. Soon they will cover the greater territory – with the help of local security companies in other regions of the country. 

If you have an interesting project, share it with the community. Send us a brief description at marketing@gurtam.com so that we can write about it on our blog.