How to organize business safely

Mobile data analytics detects how many people are in a specific location in real time. The data are acquired through the mobile phones of the Proximus network, which continuously transmit location information. The actual analysis takes place at the level of postal codes, on the basis of anonymous aggregated data from groups of thirty people at a time.

“Thanks to the analysis, municipalities gain insight into the movements of people between postal codes and between areas within a specific postal code,” says Luc Cogneau, Data Analytics expert at Proximus. That allows the municipalities to, among other things, check the degree to which residents have observed the rules on non-essential travel. “The municipalities can, for example, check where visitors to a park or forest came from.” If a subsequent corona wave comes, they can take extra targeted measures.

To be certain that the social distancing rules are observed, stores may admit a maximum of one customer per ten square meters of store floor space. Large shopping locations such as shopping centers often have various entrances and exits. That makes it extremely difficult to manually keep track of how many customers enter the store, how many are still inside and how many have left again.

“The Entrance Monitoring app controls access to a shopping location automatically and in real time,” says Thierry Depré, M2M & IoT Partnership Program Manager at Proximus. “Sensors count the people who enter and leave. Visitors see on a display how many customers are in the store, or how long the waiting time is before the next customer can enter.”

The corona measures require us to maintain adequate distance at the office too. The Comfort Monitoring service measures the temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide level at the office via sensors. If the parameters are too high, extra ventilation is indicated. But it can also indicate that there are too many people in the same space.

Floor Occupancy Monitoring counts the number of people in an office, meeting room or another location through sensors. “The application allows the maximum permitted number of people in a space to be followed automatically,” says Stijn Bogaerts, Solution Manager at Proximus. “If the maximum number of people on a floor or in a meeting room is reached, a display or light can indicate that access is prohibited.”