One of the most difficult questions to answer in incident response is where. To answer it, incident managers need situational awareness.
That’s where location intelligence comes in. But what is location intelligence? And how to harness it at your business or organization?
Read on to find out.
An intro to location intelligence
So, what does location intelligence mean? Well, location intelligence refers to insights gained from visualizing and/or analyzing location data.
Often, these insights come in the form of data concerning physical presence on a map – most often, location signals from mobile devices.
And so, the best way to think of location intelligence is as the use of geospatial data to solve problems.
What sorts of problems does location data solve?
What problems, exactly?
In incident and resources management, geospatial data that comes from location intelligence solves challenges associated with disruptions.
By giving teams real-time situational awareness, location intelligence contributes to the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, adapt to, and most importantly respond to changes and disruptions.
We stress real time, here, because teams have long relied on more static data models to gain situational awareness.
However, the advent of location intelligence has crucially led to improvements in the mode and quality of data.
Advantages of using location intelligence
Enhanced situational awareness isn’t the only benefit of location intelligence, though. Other benefits include:
Enables swift response
In pinpointing personnel and mobile assets during incidents, location intelligence enables swift response by facilitating efficient resource deployment.
More efficient resource and asset management
Identifying nearby resources allows for their optimized deployment, minimizing response time and ensuring business continuity.
Enhanced safety and wellbeing
By giving employees the ability to share their location, organizations enable lone workers to be monitored and improve response when assistance is required.
Contexts to use location intelligence in
Of course, geospatial data lends itself to the incident response scenario. However, there are other uses of location intelligence besides incident and emergency management.
For one, Security dispatchers can use location intelligence to stay updated on the whereabouts of their team. This enables more efficient dispatching, i.e., by using personnel or assets that are closest to the area.
Similarly, in the medical services space, managers leverage location intelligence to see where paramedic team members are. This helps improve coordination to improve response efficiency.
Location sharing in resilience management technologies
But what of the technological element that makes this type of data possible?
Location sharing enables location intelligence. And location sharing is the ability of users to share their location with other people and entities.
Certain integrated resilience management software platforms have introduced this functionality, giving their users the ability to voluntarily share whereabouts with the system.
How does that work out? Well, in the event of an emergency, these system users don’t have to manually update their location. Instead, their location can be shared automatically with the system. The results: managers are now able to swiftly identify the locations of personnel during emergencies.
However, that’s not the full story when it comes to location intelligence and sharing. For more, check out this article on improving resilience with location intelligence.
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