In these short video tutorials you will follow one of our instructors to set up Geofence Analyzers in Earthranger admin
Introducing Geofence Analyzers
A good day to you all,
I am Tebogo and I welcome you to another EarthRanger Guided Demo.
Now this demo focuses on Analyzers, specifically Geofence Analyzers.
We're going to look at how to configure Geofence Analyzers
and look at the steps that we need to take in order
for us to complete the configuration of a Geofence Analyzers.
We'll also look at best practices
as well as what we require in order for us to complete the configuration.
Geofence Analyzer successfully.
Now, how we're going to run this is that I'm going to share my screen.
We're going to look at our presentation on Geofence Analyzers.
After we are done with that then we'll transition into the EarthRanger
Administration site and actually configure a Geofence Analyzer.
Please do note that this specific demo is the first in a three part series.
As far as analyzes are concerned, we'll have other demos covering
the latter two versions of Analyzers,
but for this one, let's see how we configure a Geofence Analyzer.
I want to share my screen and the presentation should appear
in your side shortly.
And here is our presentation.
Now, I think it would be fair for us to try it at a very high level to define
what an Analyzer is as far as EarthRanger is concerned.
Now, Analyzer is a system tool that affords us
the opportunity to be able to monitor and manage
the behavior and movement of our assets within our locality.
Now, asset it could be a track vehicle, personnel carrying a video,
an Earth Ranger mobile cellphone, or even a vehicle fitted with a tracker.
And all of those trackers can apply to how they relate
to Analyzers in terms of the information that we want to derive from it.
All right. So let's go into the presentation.
All right.
These are the learning objectives of the demo.
Understand the role of Geofence Analyzer.
Configuring and manage geo-Analyzers.
To understand the importance of Feature groups
in the configuration of your geo-Analyzers..
And learn how to interpret data generated by Analyzers.
All right.
So Core Learning, Geofence Analyzer which is defined as a virtual boundary
or perimeter that triggers an alert or notification when a Subject
enters or exits a predefined geographic area.
So if you go into administration site, you log in
and you go to the Analyzer stage menu.
you will tap on the second menu option for the Geofence Analyzers.
And to configure it, these are the parameters that you need to consider.
Add Geofence Analyzer,
we’ll give it a name.
Assign a Subject Group.
Now this is very important in that if you don't assign a Subject Group
to a Geofence Analyzer, you wouldn't be able to configure it successfully.
What that Subject group does is basically contain all of the assets
that you want to monitor the behavior and of, in order for you to be alerted
whenever they cross a specific perimeter or boundary.
So best practice or what you could do in order for you to cover a larger
scale is you would put all of the specific,
Subjects of tracked assets within a specific Subject group
that you relate to your Geofence Analyzer
That's the Subject group.
And then you go to spatial Features.
Because remember, the Subject needs to interact with a boundary of sorts
in order for an event to be triggered and then a notification
subsequently sent to the recipient.
So obviously they would have to add, spatial Feature.
And we have two options
a Critical Geofence, which normally is much closer to the area of interest.
And then a Warning Geofence, which is somewhere a little bit outwards
from the area of interest.
So, the warning is basically configured in such a way that to alert,
the necessary personnel
that a specific Subject is with, either within proximity to, areas of interest,
or has crossed a specific boundary and could be headed
to a specific area of interest.
And then the critical is, if indeed the Subject crossed the Warning Geofence,
and it proceeds to cross the Critical Geofence, then obviously the personnel have to react
and hopefully circumvent that to circumvent that situation
before anything other than what is expected happens.
And then once we’ve
configured all of these parameters, you would save that configuration.
But do not worry,
we'll go through all of these steps together in the administration side.
Now, as I said, this practice creating separately
a separate Analyzer for each Subject of interest.
This is very important because if you are working
with the different types of Subjects and obviously different Subjects
with different types of wildlife interact different with the environment,
and they move differently and they have different behaviors.
So what you want to do is monitoring elephants, for instance, or crop raiding.
You'd want to consider the parameters of how quickly they move
during a certain time of day, and create those boundaries
for, to a certain extent, considering the behavior of those specific Subjects.
Alternatively, if you just want to monitor,
your carnivores, for instance, for, you know, predation,
your carnivores, for instance, for, you know, predation,
you could put all of your wild dogs, cheetahs, leopards,
if you have all of those carnivores within your your locality.
Put them into a Subject group and then use a specific,
boundary or a spatial Feature around those,
and say those farmers or those,
grazing areas.
So you have two options.
It's either you create a separate one, especially if you're dealing
with different types of animals for specific reasons.
Then create a separate one.
Each individual Subject group
has a specific type of species and have their own unique,
Geofence configuration.
That also allows you to be able to, you know,
monitor which Subject
groups are triggered, which specific,
Geofence analyzes what Geofence is.
And then once you've basically sorted out the configuration of which Subject groups
and how you configure your Subject groups, you could then link those Geofence
Analyzers to alerts and notifications, whereby personnel,
contacted or notified of a Geofence break by email or whatever it means.
Whenever any of the Subjects within the Subject groups
that have been linked to a Geofence Analyzer, breach, specific
boundary within their configuration of the Geofence Analyzer.
Okay.
And then if an Analyzer is no longer, used, you can be activated by,
taking action back in their respective Analyzer piece.
As always, we always advise do not delete any data.
Okay. So I think that was a good time.
That little bit of overview that we can jump into an episode
and actually get into the gist of how we configure these
and practice these best practices around as we go through it.
Setting Up a Subject Group
But I'm going to switch to another tab here called
Let’s go to Admin,
and we are using our demo site “Easter Island”
So I'm going to log in.
With our range of support user credentials.
And there we go.
All right so I'm sure you should be familiar with the EarthRanger Administration Site.
So I like to do when I work in the Admin site.
Specifally with this specific venue,
What I do is, instead of having the full view of admin.
Because we're focused on Analyzers,
I will pull out Analyzers and just focus on that specific view.
And because now we are, configuring a Geofence anlyzer,
I'll click on Geofence Analyzers
And this offers me the opportunity not to have a clouded
or crowded view of my admin site and it ease of exit.
So when I go back to Analyzer, I just jump back here
and then I can go back into analyze this menu again like so.
Now from this view, this is called the Analyzer list view.
Where you can see all of the different types of configured Analyzers.
So obviously on EarthRanger admin site, every add button is gray,
and it's situated on the right, top right of the screen.
I'm going to click on Add Geofence Analyzer here.
And then these are the parameters we saw on the slide that we have to configure.
So you remember Analyzer name can be arbitrary,
but for best practice always name it
something that is familiar to the species or the Geofence that you were tracking.
So it could be elephant and the name of the specific area
or villages and the name of that specific area.
So which I think would be the area of interest or the species
that, that is monitored against that area of interest.
Cool.
So Analyzer name here.
We'll see.
This is.
Kafue
NP that's fine.
That's descriptive enough.
So you know that this is the Geofence Analyzer
we are configuring for Kafue National Park.
And then the Subject group this is where you choose which group of Subjects
that you want to add or you want to relate to this specific Geofence.
If from this list your Subject group does not exist,
you can add it from this list, and from this view, without having to go
to the observations menu and add a Subject group from there.
So what you do here, if you want to add a new Subject Group,
you just click on the plus sign
which is always add as far as the EarthRanger admin site is concerned.
And I'll say add Subject group.
Now you'll see this takes me to the nnormal Observations and Subject group page.
And in here I'll say KNP
Elephants.
And then I'll just in brackets say PAC
Here.
All right.
And then remember when we said
you're able to switch off an Analyzer, you're also able to switch off
Subject Groups which would effectively been written by your Analyzer.
At some point.
So if you don't no longer want to receive notifications or events
about this specific Subject Subject breaching a Geofence, you can easily either
switch off the Subject Group or switch off the Geofence Analyzer.
But first choice is always switch over the Geofence Analyzer.
But in case other personnel within the organization,
I'm monitoring the specific animals within the Subject group.
Then they still have visibility over those either
EarthRanger Web or EarthRanger Mobile and nobody is deterred from,
you know, carrying out the responsibility for collecting so rather switch off the
Geofence than the Subject,
and then from the active Subjects, we can then look at which Subjects want to use.
So we know we have Horton on Easter Island as an elephant.
So we'll add him to the Subject Group
That's the single problem animal we have in this Earthranger instance
within that locality that we are defining the Geofence.
So once this is done, that's it.
That's all you do. Right?
So you give it a name, you leave it visible and you add your chosen Subjects
from your available Subjects table to your chosen Subjects table.
Once you have done that, that's done, you've defined your Subject group.
You do not need to add a group to the group, so that's fine.
Just choose your single Subject and leave it like that.
The reason why I advise against you using a group within a group.
So basically selecting a group, an existing Subject group into your,
new Subject group is because if another group comes
and it it's the Subject within the Subject group,
then you would not be able basically to affect the functionality of your Geofence.
And either.
All right.
And you leave the permissions as it is because
the Subject group does not need permissions.
Then I'll say Save.
Now you'll see the Subject group that I just created exists.
And it's linked to this Kafue NP Geofence Analyzer that we're creating.
And then from here, once we've defined the name
and the Subject group, then we can come to the spatial Features.
Now, this is very important this specifics that we need to account for
when we are adding Features and assigning them to a Geofence.
And there's two primary ways in which we can assign Features to Geofence Analyzers.
We can have it import the Feature into the site and then add it
to a Feature group.
Or we can annotate the Feature directly onto EarthRanger
and basically assign it to the Geofence.
Importing Geofence to EarthRanger
Now, what I want us to do is to preprocess the Feature
and then add it into an EarthRanger site, and subsequently then assign it to a
Feature group, which will be associate it with a Geofence Analyzer.
Now let's try and do that down.
So if I go to my GIS here it's QGIS
I can see I already preloaded a Feature
polygon of Kafue National Park in the Zambia.
Now first things first.
What we want to do is, Geofences only function as line Features.
Now that means if this is a polygon code, if you hover over the name,
it'll show you that this is a polygon and it won't function
accurately if it's if it's defined or associated with a Geofence.
And so the first thing we need to do is convert this
from a polygon to a polyline or a line string.
So obviously in this instance you go to vector Geoprocessing tools.
That's our geometry tool.
And then polygons to line. So you click on that
and then you fill in the parameters required in here.
So the input layer is the KNP Boundary.
And then we want to save it as a line Feature.
Right.
So then I just click to my directory on my PC.
Okay.
I would say it is added to a new folder.
And then I'll just say KNP
boundary.
And then I'll Save.
That’s it.
Converted to a polyline.
And it has been converted.
So I can close this.
And then from this Feature also remember that EarthRanger only accept
a definite coordinate reference system which is EPSG from 3 to 6.
Basically WGS84
So two things that you need to look out for that.
It's a line Feature and that it's in the correct coordinate reference system.
Right.
We also have another video
or another demo focusing on mapping points within EarthRanger.
So we go into further detail about what to look out for and how to configure,
and how to import Feature into EarthRanger in three different ways.
So for this demo, we're just looking at the type of Feature
we require and the coordinate reference system.
That Feature has to be in.
So if I switch of the canopy boundary polygon you'll see we are only left with the boundary.
So if I have all well done, Now I don't show multiline string which is a line Feature.
And it has the coordinate reference system EPSG from 3 to 6 also known as WGS84
So we are ready now to import this into our site and assign it to a Geofence Analyzer.
So minimize this. Come back to our site.
And in this part here I will pause it right.
And then I'll open duplicate tab just so that I can go back to Map Layers and preserve
my two field configuration that already exists on the geofence analyzers.
Now, to import the Feature into EarthRanger you go home
and then again I'll pull out
Map Layers because I am going to focus on that specific one.
And I'll use this option here.
Feature import files. Open that.
And again the add button is always on the top right add Feature import file.
And then I want to change this to GeoJSON.
That's by default and I prefer to import this in.
And in the other demo videos
we'll explain better about the different versions between
shapefile and GeoJSON and the advantages of each Spatialfile Name as KNP.
Or you can add a description.
It's not necessary.
In the Data.
You will fetch your file from
and that one there.
I want that says KNP Line.geoJSON and open that.
So that's associated.
And then the Feature Type, you can either add
the Feature Type you pulll and call it Geofence.
Or you can choose from an already existing list.
Now for the purposes of this demonstration, we'll create a new one called Geofences,
because I know there's already one in here called Geofence.
And how you add it. Remember you click on the green button
And this gives you these fields for you to complete and save.
So the first thing you do is name is Geo....
Let’s just say KNP and Geofences
and Display Category.
You can put it in the Boundaries.
And in the Presentation is, if it's either line a point or a polygon.
So obviously because we converted this Feature from a polygon into a line
which was default line presentation, right.
And within the other demo that I'm referring to
about Map Layers we also explain how each of these,
Json parameters referred to and how you can, change them accordingly.
So once I'm done with the Name, the Display Category, keep it Visible, and Presentation.
I'll then save.
and then the name field, I can go back into my
GIS system,
look at the name of this Feature on its attribute table.
And you can see the name is Kafue National Park.
So all I need to do is copy this part here,
the name of the column that has the name of the Feature.
So that the same name is represented on your file.
So I'll close that.
Now, I know that the column is named Name and I'll populate that like that.
And I'll say save.
Now, important Once you save this,
note the ID of the Feature and by that
this is what I mean.
If I open this.
You'll see this is the ID of the Feature.
So I always just note the last four alphanumericals,
just so that I know it's 539, because when we assign this Feature
to the Geofence configuration, we need to be aware of
which Feature we are assigning to the Geofence configuration.
So now we know the Feature
and we can see that the Feature is successfully uploaded, which means it's
ready for us to assign to the Geofence and allow the configuration.
So I’ll go back and then come back into my Geofence Analyzer.
I will probably just have to refresh anyway.
So this will be KNP
PAC
And Subject group is KNP Elephants (PAC)
Right.
And then we'll start with a Warning Geofence right.
So the Warning Geofence will start.
And because ours doesn't already exist here.
So this is what we refer to as a Feature group.
We'll add the Feature group here.
This is where we're going to link that Feature that we just added
into the Geofence Configuration.
So the name can just be KNP again.
You can just keep the name consistent with ease of finding.
And you can give a description about what Feature group this belongs to.
If you if you want to again for ease of finding.
Then the spatial Feature.
Remember we said it was five three something.
So it will look for ours,
Well, if you know, the name as well, you're more than welcome to add it as that.
So that's what,
That.
Okay, there we go.
So it’s called Kafue National Park Geofences.
So choose this one here.
And then if you have multiple Features, you're able to add them
to the same Feature group. Right.
So you say add another and you could add another one add another
or you could add another one.
So for the purpose of this demo only use one.
And then once I'm happy okay.
So and now you'll see that this warning Geofence
is going to use this KNP (PAC)
Right.
And you would expect the boundary of that specific Feature
to be in amber in a broken line format.
So once I'm happy with this, that's the first phase of setting up the Geofence.
I'll then say save.
Now you can see there's two Geofence Analyzers which are present
in my Geofence list.
So now if we go into the actual instance
to validate that this is working as expected, remember you were looking for
it to be represented as a broken line, because that's how the geofence is represented
in the map instance.
And it should be ain amber or yellow.
And we are in.
Now, remember, like I said, we are validating for
the geometry, which is a line broken line in this instance.
And it should be in amber. Right.
So, we go to Map Layers
and we're looking at Analyzers because it'll always be under its own,
Map Layer, which would be, which would be Analyzer.
So we have KNP (PAC) if we jump to it to validate.
There we go.
So it's in yellow and in a broken line format.
So if it doesn't appear like this, if it appears as a solid line,
that means you didn't use a line string
Drawing Features in EarthRanger
All right, let's jump back into our admin side.
Now I said there's two ways in which you can add Features
and assign them to a Geofence.
The other part that we want to look at is how you can annotate the Feature directly
onto EarthRanger
without having to go through a GIS system, which is basically much easier.
Right?
So what you can do is if you go back into your admin site,
I'm just going to duplicate this again and go back into this.
So if I go, I mean sorry, into Map Feature.
So if I go back and pull out Map Features here on map layer,
what I want to look at, I don't want to look
at importing the Feature because that has to go through a GIS.
Actually, when I digitize or annotate the Feature directly onto the Ranger.
So what I do then is I go into Features
and remember the great add button is always on the top right.
So you add a Feature and in here this is the other fields that you have to fill in.
So we'll say this is KNP
Warning
or Critical
GF (PAC)
And then the Feature type we have already configured a Feature type
but if you also wanted to configure it directly from the screen,
you're more than able to do that.
So here I would go in
and I would choose Geofences because that's what we named it.
Just type in G. And
okay so it was Geofences.
Okay.
So the data I'm just going to say Geofence or I'm actually just going to add it here.
Again I don't know why we can't see that what we added.
So I'll say Geofences.
And the display category is Boundaries.
And then line presentation again because we're going to draw in
or annotate the Feature as a line.
So I'll say okay.
And we leave these parameters as they are, because they're further
and properly explained in the map layers demo.
And then once I'm happy with that, Save.
With that same spatial file, you skip,
because remember, we're not adding a file into the system which we are importing.
We're actually just annotating it directly onto EarthRanger.
And that is done through this Feature Geometry window.
So what you do in here you'll see on the top right there
You can basically enlarge the screen.
Then here you have different base maps right.
Is it is is it topographic.
All of these different base maps.
You can choose whichever one you want to use as a base map in order
for you to annotate and digitize your Feature.
And then you finally have your geometry type.
So if I hover or overlap, I have points, right.
So if you're adding a point Feature, obviously this wouldn't function for
a Geofence, because Geofences only functions with line string Features
Then I have polygon.
Obviously you could use this,
but you'd have to convert that again so ialways just rather go for the line string.
So we'll click on line string.
And because we know where we want to create our Geofence.
In Kafue NP we'll zoom in to that specific location.
So that's where we are.
So what we want to do is we want to create a critical Geofence
to say if any of the PACs move between this line,
we want to be alerted so that we can alert each of the teams on either side.
So if the animal is coming from the south,
we need to be able to alert the North team that Horton has crossed the halfway boundary
into your region in case something else transpires on that side.
So just just so that we keep, you know, communications open
in the monitoring, effective monitoring of the specific problem.
So what we will do then in this instance.
Because remember, the outer boundary of the park
is the warning, in case Horton goes out of the park to a fence or something.
And inside we want to be warned critically, if you cross either side
so that each side is informed about the crossing.
So what we could do here is we could start the Geofence from there
and then just trace this whole line to the other side, like so.
And then that's it.
So when you start the end you just put one line
and then obviously if it’s an inundated line, it go according to the traces of that specific line.
And if it's just a straight line like this one,
you can just start on the other side.
When you get to the end, just double click and that line will be saved.
And if you want to change the line,
so maybe you want to keep it just within the boundaries and not upside,
then you can say modify Feature
and just bring that in and that you can drop it
there and bring the other side in as well from the end and there.
So the modify Feature works for either lines, points, polygons and functions.
And if we're happy then we can say exit to exit
out of the full screen of the digitizing window.
And if we're happy with everything, then we can say Save.
But before we save, we have to put this in a Feature group, right?
So remember we created a Feature group when we started with the configuration of the Geofence.
So what we can do then is you select KNP (PAC)
That’s the one we want to create.
And then we will save.
Okay. We actually we haven't added it to a Geofence.
So we need to do that first.
All right.
Let's go back down to our Analyzer page.
So we'll go into the KNP (PAC) window
And then in here we already added this one here.
So yeah we'll just say add the same way we added the other one.
The only difference is that this one was added directly onto EarthRanger.
While the previous one we had to import into into the system.
So we'll say okay KNP
Critical
KNP Critical GF (PAC)
All right.
You can add again you can add a description if you want to.
Not necessarily though.
And then the spatial Feature is where we go in and select the Feature.
Right.
So remember we already added the Feature but we didn't know the ID but we know the name of what we called it.
So then in here we can just look KNP and we have these two right.
So this one we've already used.
This is the one we just added.
And now can be Critical GF named the same as the Feature group
is the one that we annotated directly onto EarthRanger.
So you can save that one.
And again if you had multiple then you would just add those there.
And then I could say save.
Now you'll see it can be Critical is there as the Critical Geofence
So now once we save it we should be able to see that red broken line
running through the north side.
I mean the north to south. Dividing Kafue.
Best Practices
So just like for us to go through the best practices once more
in relation to what we saw on the instance, All right.
Here we go. Cool.
So now remember we said create a separate Analyzer for each Subject group.
So for instance, we created this object.
So let's say for instance we created this specific Subject for Horton
because we want to be able to receive alerts only related to Horton
when they breach the critical, you know, the warning to event.
And you could also create another Geofence configuration
for all of the elephants within the park, even without putting in them.
So just have a general tracking of elephants.
So even if they cross the north and south line, they are not problem animals,,
so they are likely not to go raid or do anything, that is untoward.
And then you could create many other types of Geofences using different Subjects
depending on the behavior and, you know, the temperament of the specific Subject.
You could also group a Subject into a Subject group.
Like I said, you could put all of the elephants
into one Subject group minus Horton, because,
he has his own Subject group because he's the he seemed to be a problem animal.
Right.
Or you could, separate out every dimension,
but then you could configure alerts and notifications.
So very helpful.
As far as any Geofence, I mean, any Analyzer is concerned.
So for instance, we also have something called an immobility Analyzer.
If an animal is immobile for a certain amount of time,
that you can get notified about it and go in and investigate,
you know, send out a reaction team.
So it's very sensible and device to link Analyzer
event be the Geofence immobility Feature proximity or Subject proximity
which are the other three that I mentioned which we'll have videos for
to link them
to a alert and notification so that the necessary personnel, are informed
and can action accordingly to circumvent or to help out when necessary.
And then if you are no longer using an Analyzer for instance,
if I wanted to switch off this Analyzer and no longer track Horton
but they they did translocated him.
So we don't need to do this anymore. To keep the events
that are linked to this Geofence Analyzer for historical purposes.
I don't want to delete it, right, So I just deactivate it
That means all of those historical event reporting on crossing Geofences.
Are still available in my database for me to access and refer to a reference.
Right.
So always deactivate either then delete even when you're trying to delete EarthRanger
will also ask you, are you sure you want to delete this.
And obviously we are not sure.
So because we want to preserve the fidelity of our database.
So that's another very good best practice from my site
from the rest of the EarthRanger team.
I hope you enjoyed this demo.
And of course, if you have any questions, please visit our resources,
First stop would be
At the EarthRanger Support Help Center or EarthRanger Support Center
In the search box, just type in Analyzers
and you'll find a host of information relating
to the different types of Analyzers which we have in the system.
We'll also carry out more demos regarding these Analyzers,
to give you the necessary, resources for you to be able to,
capacitate yourself at your speed and that you understand.
And if there's any other questions, please reach out to Contact Support,
at support.earthranger.com
We're happy to always assist and look forward to interfacing with you
in the near future.
From me, thank you for everything and I'll see you soon.
Thank you.