Michal Isaacson, a doctoral student working with Dr Noam Shoval of the Geography Department at the Hebrew University, has been involved in developing new approaches to the use of advanced tracking technologies in order to provide valuable data collection and analysis for later study and application as well as for on-the-spot real-time application.

Her work has implications for understanding the activity of people in different settings, such as urban areas, shopping malls, theme parks, national parks and other tourist attractions. It has already been tested to evaluate crowd activity and flow at the Port Aventura theme park in Spain.

The system Ms Isaacson and Dr Shoval have developed uses GPS technology to record the location of people for a designated period of time. Participants are required to carry a small GPS unit with them, and the tracking data is then analysed - using a computerised, time/space analysis engine - to derive maps that indicate the volumes of activity throughout the location as well as charts that indicate how different population groups spent their time in the location.

The tracking data can also be analysed in real-time, creating a virtual radar of the activity of visitors throughout a location. Real-time analysis can lead to more efficient dynamic management of attractions, both increasing the number of people that can visit an attraction within a given time frame and controlling their flow in a way that allows for the growth of sales and expanded revenues.

The analysis of this data can also change the way attractions are planned and can enable effective planning of future additions to an attraction.

The technology also has far-reaching medical applications. In collaboration with Dr Yair Barzilay of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School and the Orthopedic Surgery Unit at Hadassah University Hospital, a method was developed for detecting the mobility of patients after surgery as an objective measure for their follow-up recovery and well being.

The patients carry a GPS unit with them after the operation. The system tracks their movements, and the data is then analysed. Future development will integrate additional sensors that will allow the combination of GPS data with physiological data, such as heart rate and blood pressure.

The system has recently been licensed through Yissum, the Hebrew University technology transfer company, to an American company, Location Based Intelligence, for further development and commercialisation in the medical arena.