The year 2020 shocked the whole world with the challenges that Covid-19 brought. India became the most affected country after the United State of America and Brazil, recording more than 11 million cases uptill now. Several yearly awards for civil servants in 2020 were also based on their work and efforts while battling the pandemic. Similarly, the Anna Medal for outstanding devotion towards duty for the year 2020 was conferred on IPS officer Aravindhan P.
The initiatives taken by Mr. Aravindhan of 2010 batch, Superintendent of Police Tiruvallur district in Tamil Nadu, for monitoring of quarantined people and enabling proper social distancing in crowded places through technology, is the main reason behind bagging this medal. The officer has also previously received the prestigious Skoch Award for developing the Facetagr app- a face recognition app for the police to identify and catch criminals.
THE INITIATIVES
Brought up at Cuddalore district in Tamil Nadu, Mr. Aravindhan pursued his engineering in Computer Science from BITS Pilani Rajasthan. Thereafter he appeared for the UPSC exam in 2010 and managed to clear it with an AIR 164. This led him to become an IPS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre.
He has been working relentlessly since he joined the civil services. With his professional experience of being an engineer, he merged his expertise in his work as a civil servant which is now benefitting the public at large. Mr. Aravindhan has launched two initiatives with the use of technology. One is an application called CoBuddy and the other is a device known as IRIS (Instant Response to Improve Social Distancing).
CoBUDDY
Speaking with Indian Masterminds exclusively, Mr. Aravindhan said “During the Covid pandemic, we have taken a lot of initiatives for reducing the spread of the virus and to make the lives of people better. One such initiative we took is an app called CoBuddy which is for the people who are quarantined. This app helps in tracking the quarantined people, their contact status and also help the people in reaching out to the police and medical teams through the app.”
The app requires a Face Recognition Verification inside a GPS geo-fence and validates the person’s actual location. After the quarantined person downloads the app, the location and photo of the person is set. The photo is converted into a face template and location address is converted to GPS coordinates and a geo-fence of about 10m to 100 m is set. Moreover, alerts to verify themselves are made during the day at random intervals.
Mr. Aravindhan said, “The app also has a feature to make a video call or message to the district authorities. The required assistance is provided by the authorities including mental and psychological help. We also have doctors working 24 hours to guide the quarantined people through the application.”
The other initiative which was taken by Mr. Aravindhan was to make social distancing more convenient by adding a device in the most crowded places in the district.
INSTANT RESPONSE TO IMPROVE SOCIAL DISTANCING
Ensuring social distancing between citizens at public places cannot be treated as a meager law-and-order problem. It is also a measure of promoting welfare. However, considering the population density and the increasing infections in the district, IRIS came into existence. The device promotes a people-friendly approach.
IRIS was initiated in Tiruvallur district by the Police Department with a pilot project at Thirumazhisai market on 7 July, 2020. Mr. Aravindhan said “The wholesale vegetable market was shifted out of Chennai and was brought to Tiruvallur district because the Covid cases were increasing in Chennai. So, to maintain social distancing in the crowded markets, we developed a device called IRIS (Instant Response to Improve Social Distancing). It was subsequently installed at various places frequented by the public. The device uses artificial intelligence to monitor the crowd gathering and helps in maintaining social distancing between the vendor and public.”
WORKING AND BENEFITS
The compact device is an all-in-one box that has a battery backup for about 3-4 hours so intermittent power cuts will not have an impact on its functioning. The device needs to be fixed just like a CCTV camera in the location that needs to be monitored. The field of view needs to be set appropriately to ensure maximum coverage for better utilization. With the help of artificial intelligence, the device has the capability to detect human beings and measure the distance between them in real-time with a range of 25 feet.
The IRIS system has a central platform, through which data from multiple devices is assimilated and is shared with stakeholders. The device was installed for a trial run for the first time at Thirumazhisai market area in one shop on July 7th, 2020. Later, two more devices were set up in two other shops. These 3 devices remained in the 3 shops in the market observing the behaviour of people in the market area and giving out warnings when infringements of social distancing occurred.
These technology-driven initiatives placed Mr Aravindhan at an advantageous position to combat Covid and added more laurels to his long list of achievements.
