The ubiquitous existence of COVID-19 has required the management of congested areas such as workplaces. As a result, the use of a variety of inspiring tools to deal with the spread of COVID-19 has been required, including internet of things, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and geofencing technologies. In this work, an efficient approach based on the use of ML and geofencing technology is proposed to monitor and control the density of persons in workplaces during working hours. In particular, the workplace environment is divided into a number of geofences in which each person is associated with a set of geofences that make up their own cluster using a dynamic user-centric clustering scheme. Different metrics are used to generate a unique geofence digital signature (GDS) such as Wi-Fi basic service set identifier, Wi-Fi received signal strength indication, and magnetic field data, which can be collected using the person's smartphone. Then, these metrics are utilized by different ML techniques to generate the GDS for each indoor geofence and each building geofence as well as to detect whether the person is in their cluster. In addition, a Layered-Architecture Geofence Division method is considered to reduce the processing overhead at the person's smartphone. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can perform well in a real workplace environment. The results show that the system accuracy is about 98.25% in indoor geofences and 76% in building geofences.
Keywords: COVID-19; artificial intelligence; deep learning; digital signature; dynamic user-centric clustering; geofencing; machine learning; magnetic field.