A cost-effective alertness-rating tool to enable situational awareness among on-duty static security guards in Covid-19 pandemic

The workload of the static security guards has doubled due to the Covid-19 outbreak. In addition to their regular duties, they undertake some additional tasks to evaluate each individual’s body temperature and welcome them with a hand sanitizer. In this scenario, their situational awareness is hugely desirable to perform these activities for the entire campus’s safety. This situational awareness of guards means their ability to observe, inspect, and make the right decisions. However, due to their fatigue and other secondary activities, such as cell phone use, they cannot perform their duties correctly. In this context, this paper presents a method for sending random alarms in real-time to the on-duty guards, who are executing their work at the campus gates, remotely monitoring the alertness throughout the day from the head security office. For alertness detection, the system uses a simple client–server model. The system is designed using NodeMCU Wi-Fi modules. The algorithm of the Client, server, and repeater has been developed. The prototype has been tested by placing it on the working individuals’ desk inside the departmental lab inside the campus. The system records the response time of the working individuals. These data are further used to calculate their percentage of alertness. In addition, an alertness-rating/scoring method has been developed to improve their work performance. This system can be an economical solution to enable the awareness of on-duty guards.