A Close Contact Tracing Method Based on Bluetooth Signals Applicable to Ship Environments

Abstract

There are still outbreaks of COVID-19 across the world. Ships increase the risk of worldwide transmission of the virus. Close contact tracing remains as an effective method of reducing the risk of virus transmission. Therefore, close contact tracing in ship environments becomes a research topic. Exposure Notifications API (Application Programming Interface) can be used to determine the encountered location points of close contacts on ships. Location points of close contact are estimated by the encountered location points. Risky areas in ships can be calculated based on the encountered location points. The tracking of close contacts is possible with Bluetooth technology without the Internet. The Bluetooth signal can be used to judge the proximity among detecting devices by using the feature that Bluetooth has a strong signal at close range. This Bluetooth feature makes it possible to trace close contacts in ship environments. In this paper, we propose a method for close contact tracing and showing the risky area in a ship environment by combining beacon and Exposure Notification API using Bluetooth technology. This method does not require an Internet connection for tracing close contacts and can protect the personal information of close contacts.

A close contact identification algorithm using kernel density estimation for the ship passenger health

“…The AUC of CCIA is 93%. The result shows that CCIA is more suitable for ship environments ( Lin and Son, 2023 ).

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A Comparison of Deep Learning Models for IQ Fingerprint Map Based Indoor Positioning in Ship Environments

“…However, traditional methods of identifying close contacts primarily rely on inquiries, which are not only inefficient but also prone to significant errors. To address this issue, a novel approach has been proposed in the literature [2], which involves tracking close contacts through Bluetooth signals.…”