HajjLocator: A Hajj Pilgrimage Tracking Framework in Crowded Ubiquitous Environment

Teddy Mantoro, Abi Dzar Jaafar, Mohd Fadhli Md. Aris, Media A. Ayu Department of Computer Science, Kulliyyah (Faculty) of Information and Communications Technology,

International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract—Hajj, an annual Muslim pilgrimage, is one of the pillars of Islam and every able Muslim must perform this act at least once in their lifetime. During the pilgrimage, millions of Muslims from all over the world congregate for religious rituals in Makkah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The cases of missing Hajj pilgrims are not uncommon and although several tracking and navigation devices have been introduced, there is still a need for a better solution in overcoming the issue. There are several factors that prevent a widespread use of the system, such as the operational costs, availability of the connections and the use in uncommon platform. Thus, this paper proposes a HajjLocator framework for Hajj Pilgrim tracking based on mobile phone environments as it is reasonably affordable and is extensively used by people. The prototype of HajjLocator, as a system to track and monitor pilgrims while performing Hajj, is also discussed.

Keywords-GPS, GSM, Hajj Pilgrimage, Mobile Tracking

I. INTRODUCTION Hajj, an annual Muslim pilgrimage, is one of the pillars of

Islam and every able Muslim must at least perform this once in their lifetime. During this pilgrimage, millions of pilgrim from all over the world congregates for religious rituals in Makkah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

During this pilgrimage, millions of pilgrim from all over the world congregates for religious rituals. In statistics, the number of pilgrims went to Makkah to perform Hajj is around two million people. In a statistic released by the Ministry of Hajj, the number of people who went to the pilgrimage in 2006 is 2,130,594, where 73% of the pilgrims are non-Saudis pilgrims [1]. The Saudis pilgrims make up the smallest percentage of people that are lost. In other words, majority of Hajj pilgrims are not familiar with the surroundings in Makkah, despite the preparation they made beforehand. Koshak et al. [8] mentioned that apart from the Hajj period, Makkah areas become very crowded during the last ten days of Ramadan. During the month of Ramadan, it was reported that there are more than 2,500 cases of missing people in the area of Masjid al-Haram, the grand mosque in Makkah [4]. To have such a worrying figure even before the Hajj period starts would be very dangerous and if no further improvements made, the safety and security of the pilgrims would be jeopardized.

In the yesteryears, Hajj authorities use conventional measures in dealing with the missing pilgrim’s situation, where multilingual guards and mobilized scouts are placed to help

pilgrims finding their way back. Even a lost pilgrims’ centre was established to further improves the situation.

However, the problem still occurs not only because of the language barrier, but also because of the environment in Makkah itself. Guards and scouts are not placed in every corner of Makkah and there are possibilities where pilgrims might get lost in secluded places and cannot be found. While it may be helpful, maps, signboards and street names in Makkah are not enough to be the pilgrims’ guide in navigating their way. It is because people rarely used information such as distance information and street names, to direct them to places. Instead, they prefer to use things they are familiar in sight or things that are symbolic, as their navigation cue. Based on May et al. [10] landmarks were by far the most frequently used category of navigation information. For this reason, there are pilgrims who use technological aids in guiding them to places.

However, not everyone could afford to use those technologies. The solution can be addressed by offering specific framework to accommodate the needs in technology deprived places and densely populated areas. This paper aims on studying the Hajj pilgrimage situations and problems, as well as proposing a better solution of a reliable and affordable Hajj pilgrimage tracking framework.

II. RELATED WORK There has been quite a number of tracking and monitoring

systems being developed, each using its own various means and facilities and has their own way in increasing the effectiveness of the system. One of the most widely recognized is the tracking via RFID chips. Nowadays, we could see a lot of embedded RFID chips placed in our belongings and because of its relatively small size, it has been used quite extensively. In order to have a system that suits events such as Hajj, Yamin et al. [15] proposed to track people using the RFID and wireless technologies. It used a database to store data and entities of each person. Conversely, installing sensor networks for sensing and reading the chips would have some serious economic considerations especially for events that happen irregularly.

Another approach is by having object recognition where a picture, usually landmark, is taken, using a built-in camera in any common mobile phone, to identify their location based on the picture they taken [9]. It also used the GPS to read the actual position if available and if the data cannot be obtained, it uses an approximate estimation of the cell information of

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the phone-network provider. As good as the system might get, the system relies solely on Internet connectivity. People need to register to have their own Internet connection available in their mobile phones and for those who do not have any Internet connection; it is burdensome to do all of requirements only to be used in a short period time, like in Hajj.

Another approach is by implementing a low cost object tracking system using GPS and GPRS [6]. The system allows a user to view the present and the past positions recorded of a target object on Google Maps through the Internet. It reads the current position of the object using GPS, the data is sent via GPRS service from the GSM network towards a web server. It also argues that using SMS as the means of communication with the server is expensive. In contrast, although it is cheaper to use wireless network technologies in mass usage, it is expensive to be use if we consider the period of time it will be used, with the amount of money we have to pay. However, in Hajj pilgrimage situation where the pilgrims will only be there for maximum of around a month, getting Internet services from ISPs might be troublesome and therefore might results in inability to use the localization service.

III. OBJECTIVE The framework has three aims. The first is to promote

accessibility by choosing a common platform that is widely used by people, which is the mobile phone. The second is to provide connections availability towards the user, where we use two types of connections in updating the data to the server. The third is to implement a framework has a better use of tracking means, and has corrective measures in increasing the accuracy of GPS system used.

IV. HAJJLOCATOR ARCHITECTURE OVERVIEW The architecture of the framework has two parts, the mobile

device of the connection server and the tracking system using the database server, as shown in Figure 1. The GPS-enabled mobile phone is attached with the user and it will then sends the data with the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card number as its identity, together with other data such as the coordinates and update mode, to the server and saved into the database.

Figure 1. HajjLocator Architecture

The server which deals only to provide reliable indoor and outdoor user location is divided into three parts; server side, processing side and connection side. A separation of servers is needed to handle the mass client updates. Also, database should be divided into different server to ease the process of updates and avoids bottleneck.

Figure 2. Client mobile application interface

In terms of connectivity, we will deals with two different services offered by any GSM mobile phones. It uses any wireless network infrastructures available, together with SMS as the means of data communication between the client and server. The main priority will be given to updates using any available Internet connection such as Wi-Fi, GPRS and 3G, where it will then make use of the connection to update the server with pilgrim’s GPS coordinates. On the other hand, SMS is also used as the other alternative connection to update the server. In case there are not any Internet connections available, the device will automatically use SMS as the alternative option. This solves the availability issue especially in alerting the missing pilgrim cases.

In addition to that, the security concern is put into consideration. When the administrative or authorized personnel want to track pilgrims, they need to log into the web server and gets the position of the pilgrim in two selections, in a Google Maps view, and in a tabular view. Security concerns is considered as to control privacy, thus we will authenticate any user who wants to access the data.

A. Hardware Specifications

A HTC Touch Diamond2 smart phone has been selected in implementing the prototype of the HajjLocator framework, as shown in Figure 2. The phone is using Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and has an internal GPS antenna. In terms of network, it supports HSDPA/WCDMA network of up to 2 Mbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds, a Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and a Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11. More information about the mobile phone can be accessed through the web site at [1].

The server is running under normal PC with AMD Phenom 9600B Quad-Core Processor 2.31 Ghz, 1.75 GB of RAM.

B. Software Specifications

In order to update the server, we have designed a client application in parallel with the server process. The application is written using C# on Microsoft .NET Framework. It reads the latitude and longitude of the location and process it based on the specifications defined by the user. The main specifications are through the distance-based and time-based parameters.

The choice of distance-based and time-based parameter is designed to offer flexibility to the user in updating to the server. Figure 3 shows the flow diagram of the distance-based and time-based updating of latitude and longitude to the server. For the distance calculation of coordinates, the Cosine-Haversine formula technique based on [11], has been used. It results in a great-circle distance between two points on a sphere, given the latitudes and longitudes.

However, other parameters can also be used manually according to their request, which are the Mark My Location and the panic alert. Mark My Location is a special button designed for users who intended to update the server about their current location. It uses only the chosen connectivity method to communicate with the server. This data of latitude and longitude will help the system to store reference point which will later be used to correct and adjust any deviated coordinates, which then improves the location estimation accuracy. By comparison, the panic button is designed to alert the system in emergency situations. It uses all of the available resources, i.e. Wi-Fi, GPRS and SMS, and to update current location of the user.

Fig. 3: Client-side flowchart in server updating

In order to compensate the real-time update and at the same time being cost-effective, we have decided to use the dynamic update triggering to the server. In other words, the user will be in an area of circle with a defined radius and the system will only send an update to the server, should the user moves more than the defined distance. For this reason, to gain popularity and widespread usage, our proposed framework is developed in

a balanced approach and provides the ability to facilitate real-time update in a cost-effective way.

On the server side, the development was done using PHP5, JavaScript, AJAX and DHTML. To provide reliable data management, MySQL is used in database server. To read coordinates from database, we use a PHP file, and parse it into an XML format. These XMLs are then will be processed by the application processing server.

Fig. 4. Snapshot of the web page which shows the historical positions and route of the pilgrim in Google Maps view

Fig. 5. Snapshot of the web page which shows the historical positions of the pilgrim in tabular view

To display the tracking and monitoring of the user, a web-based application has been developed. Through the web application, administrative or authorized personnel will be able to view the live position of the tracked user, together with the past positions and the route they have chosen. A web application is responsible for accepting data that has been sent by the mobile device via GPRS or GSM, using GET method of the HTTP protocol. This data consists of SIM number of the device, latitude, longitude, time, date, update mode, and

distance between two consecutive coordinates based on their updating mode. SIM number is used to authenticate the device.

For the real-time aspect, we use the technique of checking the database in periodic basis. Once real-time mode is activated, the current time will be stamped and then the database will be checked, as shown in Figure 6. If new data were found, the marker will be added to the map. Checking the database in a specific interval will automatically animate the marker on the map. We use the publicly accessible Google Maps API for some part of the code.

Fig. 6. Function of real-time update used

V. HAJJLOCATOR FRAMEWORK In order to prove the reliability of the framework in

accordance to the geography environment of Makkah, our prototype testing is done in four types of place; crowded, open spaces, closed spaces and semi-opened spaces. The similarity between the chosen environments with the Makkah surroundings can be seen through Figure 7.

Fig. 7. Environment of IIUM and Makkah for testing purposed

The actual route is designed, defined and translated manually through Google Maps. We start the test and walk on defined route, and upload the data to the server using the prototype. The chosen location for the testing phase is in the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM), in Gombak. The updates are done on three different methods; which are the update via request, and also both of the automatically update method, which are based on distance and time. The manual updates via request are done every time we reach the designated places, to measure the accuracy of the GPS coordinates received with the actual location.

Figure 4 shows an example of the user’s locations and route, after a redirection takes place. In other words, the testing has been done in IIUM surroundings and using the data we have, it will be redirected towards Makkah to actually simulate the situation that might be happening during the Hajj pilgrimage.

Based on the data we collected, analysis was done and generally categorized into two parts; the occurrence of updates and the accuracy of the GPS data updated to server. Solving the dilemma of using time or using distance, we compare the testing data between two methods of the time-based and distance-based update. We compared them by their occurrences of the updates to the server.

Also, the connection to server was examined in terms of its cost by comparing the cost of telecommunication services in Makkah with what we have in Malaysia. The result of comparison will then be converted to US dollars to conform to the international standards. The availability of the GSM and GPRS connection is Makkah is also investigated by confirming the packages offered by telecommunication’s company in Makkah.

VI. RESULT AND DISCUSSION Reliability, accessibility and availability of the proposed

framework can be achieved through consideration of three elements.

A. Accuracy of GPS coordinates

In general, the GPS system used works fine in open spaces and even in certain semi-opened places. Only on few occasions do the data have not been able to be sent to the server. Through several testing, the result shows that there are some losses where the server does not receive any notifications, or a null data have been received. There are also some exceptional situations where the GPS system provides a big deviation in giving the actual user’s location. Data like that could be known about its accuracy with the use of database in the server. As a database is available to store historical data of the user’s locations, we can judge which coordinate is possible and then exclude any irrelevant and unacceptable location that might be received.

The problem of coordinate deviations can be seen in Figure 8, where two different routes are shown in the map. In estimation, the clear-bordered path drawn in map is the actual route of the testing, while the solid black pathway is the route drawn from the GPS coordinates sent to the server.

As a database is available to store historical data of the user’s locations, we can construct reference coordinate to adjust and correct the deviated coordinates. This is very helpful especially in the Hajj pilgrimage, as the rituals of the pilgrimage are definite and a pattern can be seen. A study has been conducted by [8] to see the pedestrians’ movement in Hajj ritual of Tawaf, the circumambulation of Kaabah. It shows that pilgrims are on a specific characteristic which can be visualized by spatial-temporal analysis.

Fig. 8. Comparison of actual coordinates with GPS coordinates

B. Credible Method of Updates

Through the testing, the three types of tracking method, which is the user request, time-based and distance-based tracking, come into a close examination. Via the user request update, user will send their coordinates only with their consent. On-demand updates can particularly help people in desperate situations to alert others about their whereabouts. By that, other people can then know spot-on where that person is and only when it is needed. On the other hand, while this feature is one of the most efficient cost-cutting methods, it should only be used together with other updating methods and used as an add-on function, rather than replacing them.

Fig. 9. Distance between consecutive points of update

That is why additional complementary methods, such as the time-based or distance-based monitoring system, are needed. In a time-based situation, the user’s coordinates will be sent to a database periodically. This offers a real-time update of the user and the shorter the interval is, the more precise we will know about the user’s location. Notwithstanding, constantly sending data to the database might prove costly and burden people more than it could save them. People do not continuously moves around and it is not cost-wise to send sets of data that contains unchanged location of that person repetitively, as we could see in Figure 5 where there is zero value for the distance between the updated point. Besides, the graph resulted in Figure 9 shows that the time-based approach does send updates to the server even if the movement is minimal, where people are still in sight. Through the method, the system will eventually be updated with redundant coordinates.

In the case of distance-based, we can see that the data is sent for a specified distance. This will be helpful since no unneeded data is sent to the server and the cost of updating to the server can be minimized. Figure 10 gives fact that distance based is more credible approach than the time-based, since it the total updates are lesser in percentage. Despite, in occasion of fifth and sixth test, distance-based does has slightly higher percentage of update compared to the time-based approach. This is because these two tests were done with a faster walking speed than normal. Even so, it is important to note that the distance-based tracking will ensure that we will not lost sight of the tracked user. Hence, distance-based update is recommended to track a pilgrims rather than time-based.

Fig. 10. Frequency of updates sent

Fig. 11. Comparison of GPRS and SMS cost

C. Affordable Cost.

The cost of the update in regards to the Makkah telecommunication company is summarized into Figure 11. There is huge difference in cost, using two different kinds of connections, which are the GPRS and SMS. GPRS offer reliable and efficient cost-cutting while SMS can be the alternative connection should there is no GPRS connectivity available, such as in tunnels and remote areas.

Figure 11 is drawn based on the average update of both time-based and distance-based method within a 1 KM of distance. The average is then calculated with the cost charged by telecommunication companies in KSA. Mobily and STC are the chosen telecommunication companies, as they provide the worst-case cost in terms of their packages of GPRS and SMS. Mobily offers a GPRS connection with US$ 0.55 per 1 MB which is the most expansive while an STC’s SMSs charge is about USD 0.094 with outside network [3]. This fact is used to calculate the cost of updating the server using GPRS and SMS in our framework.

In summary, the cost of update using GPRS and SMS differs a lot, where the scale is on a scale of 0.001:0.5. As a result, GPRS connection would be given a priority than SMS in the proposed framework.

VII. CONCLUSION Tracking and monitoring individuals in crowded and dense

surroundings is already a difficult issue. Despite the ever-improving technologies in the modern world, it has not been able to solve the most basic issue in any crowded events, such as the Hajj pilgrimage in Makkah. The use of better and more advanced frameworks might not be the panacea in overcoming the problem, but it will surely offers a help in aiding the problem. The current development of the HajjLocator framework is in first stage of a prototype.

For future enhancements, apart from simulations, additional testing in real world scenarios in Makkah is needed to test the prototype and to add several features such as geolocation, geofence, SOS button, etc into the application in the smart phone. We also need to take into account the elderly by developing special hardware (not a PDA or Mobile phone), with pre-installed emergency numbers and the SOS button.

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