New compasses, new security

For thousands of years compasses and stars guided walkers and travelers, today these systems are replaced by gps, Global Position System, which shows the way, in addition to serving as a method of safety, especially for those companies that base their assets on transportation.

GPS was used, as its concept is known, during the Cold War, when the United States and the USSR felt the need to know where their fleets, their vehicles or their armament were, in such a way that they created a monitoring system based on satellite systems that would give them this information. Years later the Ministry of Defense of the United States developed the Navstar GPS project, Global Position System, to be able to constantly monitor submarines, tanks, aircraft etc.  But it was only until the end of 1983 that the initial operational phase of GPS was declared.

Currently there is a final constellation of GPS satellites (21 main units plus three spare assets), distributed in six orbits, so that there are four satellites per orbit, which allows any device equipped with a GPS receiver to interpret these satellite transmissions and give the exact coordinates of the place where it is located. The implementation of this system for civilian use began in 1999 and has a margin of error of between five and 15 meters.

Due to the special features of this system, there are companies that offer equipment, software and services that are related to GPS, especially for the security sector.   

The GPS business has spread to the point that not only vehicles are located, but you can locate anything on earth that has a device capable of interpreting the signals of satellites, which could even be used to find a  pet. Around the world this monitoring system is offered in real time, and the information can be sent to the user's cell phone or monitored from a web platform.

For the issue of positioning to be a success, it is necessary to have, in addition to the information provided by the constellation of satellites, a large number of maps of cities, regions and roads on which the coordinates delivered by the GPS can be located, which are nothing more than numbers indicating latitude, length and degrees.

Some companies (as mentioned above) use GPS's for vehicle recovery, so much so that in countries such as Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina insurers require that vehicles with a value greater than 30,000 dollars have this solution. Also in the federal district of Mexico from this year all 0 km cars must come with this equipment installed. However, experts in the field consider that in Latin America this technology is not widely used and is barely being exploited in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and a little in Colombia. In Mexico the development of GPS is high, not only because of the characteristics of the country but because the government has imposed some guidelines and regulations on this issue.