Esri ArcGIS IPS indoor positioning system

Smartphone navigation apps have given people a greater sense of personal freedom, allowing them to efficiently venture from one unfamiliar place to another — but that sense of knowing can fade once someone has arrived at an airport, corporate campus or medical centre complex. While a global positioning system (GPS) can’t find a doctor’s suite or help medics locate an apartment inside a building, an indoor positioning system can. To meet this demand and bring more understanding of indoor use patterns to improve operational efficiency, Esri has launched ArcGIS IPS, enabling organisations to add indoor location services across their facilities and campuses.

The system allows maintenance workers to review service requests to immediately identify and navigate to a location inside the building where repairs are needed. To report a new issue, they can log in and mark their position, making it easy for other team members to find that location for follow-up work. This type of automation reduces errors that can occur with manual reporting.

The system enables real-time indoor location services through Esri’s ArcGIS Indoors mobile application and in custom apps built with ArcGIS Runtime SDKs. To implement the system, Bluetooth beacons, also known as iBeacons, are installed inside buildings. These small, one-way radio transmitters send out information that gets picked up by mobile devices. Esri’s ArcGIS IPS Setup mobile app collects radio signals to locate user mobile devices. The user’s location displays as a blue dot on the ArcGIS IPS map, the same way it might display in familiar GPS navigation apps.

In addition to real-time indoor wayfinding, the system provides GIS teams, facility managers and senior executives with location information data capture and analytics. Within hybrid workplace models, these tools are in demand for managing flexible seating arrangements and sharing individual user locations. This creates transparency for identifying onsite staff and improves safety for in-person workers. As with smartphone navigation apps, mobile device users can choose to turn on location sharing or opt out.