On March 29, 2020, As the Coronavirus (COVID- 19) crisis spreads, IIT (Indian Institute of Technology)-Bombay developed 2 mobile applications called “Corontine” and “Safe”, that can track violations by people supposed to be in quarantine. The proposals of both apps have been sent to officials in the Ministry of Human Resource and Department, Niti Aayog, the Maharashtra government and the BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation).
Key Points:
i.The app has been developed by Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Department students, teachers along with some professionals and an alumnus.
ii.About Corontine app: The app helps authorities by checking the suspected carriers are confined in their quarantine zones. It uses geo-fencing & automatically generates alerts [SMS (short message service),email (Electronic Mail), etc.] if suspected people move out of the quarantine zone.
iii.The app can be installed on the mobile phones of asymptomatic carriers (AC) by an authorised agency (AA). It will send GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates of the mobiles periodically to the server under the supervision of AA & automatically detect when the user moves a specified quarantine zone marked by geo-fence.
iv.About Safe app: The quarantined individual will take a selfie, say for 4 times a day & the authorities check whether they are in the desired location. The violations can be checked on the authenticated user interface.
v.The safe app was used by several students of IIT-Bombay to mark their attendance in class or exams.
About IIT-Bombay:
Motto– Knowledge is the Supreme Goal.
Director– Subhasis Chaudhuri.
