Another in a series of posts about some of the good things coming from our industry, which benefit society and our world as a whole.
A while back, we wrote about the use of GPS Tracking to fight Polio in Africa. In that instance, GPS was used to verify that medicines were delivered to planned location – not too differently from the way many of Geoforce’s customers use GPS fleet tracking for service verification, e.g., “did the Water truck get to the seven scheduled well sites today as planned?”
Interestingly, GPS is also finding a different but related use in mapping public health and research data. Public Health and Safety officials are increasingly mashing GPS data with other map overlays to help track disease statistics. A recent article in National Geographic Online shows some interesting examples of how this is being done.
Of course, the merging GPS location data with GIS information overlays is something that Geoforce has used from the very beginning. We’ve always believed that an asset’s location by itself is good, but asset location with context is truly valuable. That’s why our standard offering includes key data such as Well Sites (by name) and other GIS data specific to the Oil & Gas industry. Now we can answer a question: “how long has that frac tank been on site at XYZ well?”
This idea of “location with context” is why more and more of our customers are requesting small customizations which we call “build your own map layer” – to add in their own company-specific names to their map. With a single click, users can filter different location types, both industry provided sites, as well as their own. And it’s how customers providing or using oilfield rental equipment can better manage their assets.
GPS has certainly come a long way from a single dot on a map with a lat/long or an address!
