For private owners and businesses alike, a vehicle is a considerable investment, and an owner would not want this vehicle to become lost or stolen. The good news is that in recent years, it has become possible to install a car GPS tracker into a vehicle, and this device will transmit the car’s location at all times to GPS satellites orbiting the Earth. Installing a car GPS tracker is in fact a fairly common practice that may be gaining in popularity, alongside the general rise of the geospatial data analysis industry (which in turn is based on the Internet of Things). A car tracking device, or a truck GPS tracker, can be very useful for the automotive industry, and asset management becomes much easier once vehicles have GPS trackers inside them that link up to geospatial data analysis. Just what is the broader field of geospatial analysis? Can a car GPS tracker really be so useful?
Geospatial Data
A car GPS tracker, or other vehicle tracking solutions, are a part of the industry of geospatial data analysis; that is, collecting data from the trackers of cars, laptops, or other electronics and studying patterns of movement. This idea is most often done by means of GPS satellites tracking laptops and cell phones that have RFID chips in them, but a car GPS tracker or truck tracker can do this, too. The geospatial analysis industry has a major job: track how consumers move around cities and towns with their electronic devices on their person, so that marketers can study where and when people move and adjust marketing strategies accordingly. This is often done for business, but the technology has other uses, too, such as tracking cars or trucks. The Internet of Things, describing how mobile electronics connect to the Internet, is really taking off by now, and geospatial analysis is making full use of that fact. Vehicle GPS trackers are not far behind, and can be very useful for a number of other reasons.
Tracking a Car
Tracking cars with GPS may not work quite as well for marketing strategies, but GPS tracking can in fact be very useful not for marketers, but for the vehicle’s owner. This can apply to both a private vehicle owner and a business that owns cars, trucks, or jets, and for similar reasons. One major reason is to help counter-act theft. Car theft is still common, and private citizens may have their cars broken into and stolen, even in broad daylight, and such car thieves count on the owner not being able to track where the car goes, so that recovery is impossible. What’s worse, businesses may have their vehicles stolen too, and if no GPS trackers are in place, a company may face a serious loss once one of its expensive vehicles is gone in a thief’s hands. This can make GPS tracking technology a smart investment for companies to make.
GPS tracking solutions can change that. If a car, truck, or jet has a GPS tracker in it, then the owners can use the data from GPS satellites to track its location at all times, and this means that recovery teams can be sent to retrieve the vehicle no matter where the thief took it. The same may be true if a car, truck, or plane is being used by a traveling business professional who is planning on doing things that they are not supposed to. And this technology can also be useful and even save lives if a car, truck, or jet becomes lost or immobile during a storm or other disaster, such as hurricanes, floods, avalanches, or more. A person trapped in a vehicle like this may be unable to call for help or get their vehicle moving again, but if the GPS tracker is online, then search and rescue crews can get the data from a GPS satellite and locate the vehicle. A snow plow, heavy duty truck, or even a helicopter might be sent out to rescue anyone trapped in or near a bogged-down or damaged vehicle and retrieve them, and the vehicle itself might be recovered at some point, if possible.