Workplace Contact Tracing
The Safe web application helps employees return safely to the workplace. Safe provides companies with an automated contact history for employees who self-report testing positive for COVID-19. By running a contact history, customer administrators can prevent further disease spread by requesting that exposed contacts voluntarily self-quarantine while maintaining the operations of the facilities with employees that were not at risk of coming in contact with employees that tested positive.
The solution utilizes Enlighted’s Bluetooth Low Energy employee badges in combination with the Enlighted sensor network.
The solution prioritizes privacy by eliminating the need for storing personal information. Employees are assigned alphanumeric ID badges while entering the workplace. When an employee self-reports their badge ID and a positive test result, administrators query the Safe application, identify other badges this employee came in contact with, and share the anonymous IDs. Employees carrying those badge IDs can self-identify their exposure without revealing any names.
Alternatively, employers may choose to map badge IDs to employee names on their internal systems.
Contact tracing begins when an occupant self-reports to the customer administrator that they tested positive for the virus—the customer admin logs into the Safe web application using their company’s credentials. Suppose an occupant with Badge ID-100432 tested positive for the virus; the occupant reports their Badge ID to the admin.
The admin searches for all other badges that were in contact with the Badge ID-100432,
- Type or select the Badge ID of the infected person from the dropdown list.
- Select the proximity. Proximity is identified as Close, Near, and Far. Proximity definitions can be custom-defined. See Configure Settings. By default:
- Close – A close contact is a badge that was about 2 meters or less from the badge being queried.
- Near – A near contact is a badge that was about 3 meters or less from the badge being queried.
- Far – A far contact is a badge that was about 4 meters or less from the badge being queried.
- Select the duration. Duration is the amount of time spent with the infected person at a distance less than the selected proximity. The customer may choose five duration options. The default query options are 1, 2, 5, 15, and 30 minutes.
- Select a Start and End Date from the pop-up calendar. By default, customers can query date ranges for the last 30 days.
- Click Search.
The search reports every Badge ID that the queried badge came in contact with for the specified proximity and duration along with the number of events. The events represent the number of times (i.e., contact events) that the badge came in contact with the queried badge.
For example, in the screen below, Badge ID-100432 was near two other people for greater than five minutes, one person for a total of about 11 minutes, and the other person for about five hours and 37 minutes.
By clicking the down arrow at the right end of the row for the badge with ID-672703, you can view the number of times the queried badge came in contact with Badge ID-672703 for the total duration of five hours and the number of times they came within the proximity.
The color of the icons indicates relative duration and proximity. Generally, the red color indicates longer durations and, or closer proximities. Yellow color indicates shorter durations and, or farther proximities, that still lie within the search criteria. These colors are relative.
You can also download the information into a CSV file by clicking the CSV download button on the top to either archive or integrate this information with other business processes.
Dashboard
The Dashboard provides visual trends and insights into the number of people and contact events occurring among people at the workplace. The Dashboard allows managers to understand how occupants use the workplace and where contact events occur by displaying data for specific periods. The data-driven insights enable managers to reduce workplace risk by measuring risk in real-time and adjusting workplace policies and layout of space and furniture.
By default, the Dashboard shows the activity for the entire real estate portfolio. You can filter to display data by specific campus, building, or floor using the Options icon (three dots) to select the appropriate portfolio hierarchy level.
For example, the default Portfolio-level view shows data for the busiest and riskiest campuses in the portfolio. A campus-level view would show the data for all buildings in the selected campus, and a building-level view would show data for all the floors in the building. Selecting a particular floor would show data for each area on that floor.
You can change parameters that determine a contact event, such as proximity and duration in Settings, a system-wide setting that applies to all users. See Configure Settings.
This article explains the following Dashboard widgets:
Dashboard View
Total Over Time
Displays trends in the number of unique people and unique contacts for the selected hierarchy level for the selected date range. Visualizing this information over a 30-day period enables managers to quickly detect an increase in the number of people occupying the selected workplace or a surge in the number of contact events. You can display the number of unique people and unique contacts for a particular day by hovering over the trend lines for that day.
The days are represented on the x-axis and the number of people and contacts on the y-axis. To change the duration period, select a specific date range from the calendar on the Dashboard's top-right corner.
For example, the image below shows the daily totals and a summary of Total, Average, and Peak metrics for the entire period from 11 November to 09 December. You can also drag the sliders at either end of the chart to view the metrics for a smaller time period.
For example, using the sliders to look at metrics for the week of November 15-21 shows that daily contact events were rapidly increasing.
After changing some workplace policies during the week of Nov 22-28, the data for Nov 29-Dec. 05 reveals a reduction in contact events even though the number of people remains at similar levels.
Unique People
Displays the total number of people occupying the workplace for the selected time range, including the Total, Daily Average, and Daily Peak values. For example, a Total value of 100 means that 100 unique people were present in the workplace at some time during the date range selected by the sliders. The Daily Peak value of 75 means that there were never more than 75 people in the workplace at any one time. This is useful to measure and enforce maximum workplace occupant limits. The Daily Average value of 52 represents the average number of people in the workplace each day for the selected date range.
Unique Contacts
A unique contact occurs when two people spend at least a certain amount of time within a certain distance of each other. The duration and proximity settings (set in Configure Settings) determine what triggers a contact event. For example, if the Duration is 15 minutes and the Proximity is 6 feet, a contact event will be triggered if two people spend at least 15 minutes within 6 feet of each other, such as seated next to each other in a conference room. Once the people move apart, the contact event is closed and logged. If the same two people move to meet again later that day, for example, eating lunch together in the break room, and are within 6 feet of each other for at least 15 minutes, a new contact event will be created.
Busiest Spaces
Ranks and displays the top 10 busiest spaces based on the number of unique people for the chosen date range. Identifying the most active locations will help you focus on implementing effective risk reduction strategies around these areas.
The Spaces shown are based on the selected hierarchy level chosen through the Select Location panel.
In this example, the hallway is the busiest space with 83 unique people on the floor. The organization could reduce traffic in the hallway by providing other entrances and planning for additional routes. Please note that a “Busy” space does not by itself indicate a high level of risk. The Hallway is the busiest because all visitors to the workplace travel along it; the Contacts metric will reveal whether the people are using the Hallway in a safe or in a risky manner.
Riskiest Spaces
Displays the top 10 riskiest spaces based on the number of contacts that occurred for the selected date range. Identifying high-risk areas where many contact events occur helps the organization focus strategies and tactics around these areas to reduce risk.
You can filter to display data by campus, building, or floor from Options in the Select Location panel.
For example, when the Dashboard data revealed that 189 contacts occurred in the break room, occupants were encouraged to eat meals at their desks or outside, furniture was rearranged within the break room, and under-utilized spaces in the workplace were designated as overflow break areas. In subsequent weeks, the Dashboard showed a decrease in the number of contacts in the break room.
Tree Map
The Tree Map visually displays the relative importance of campuses or floors based on where the number of people and contacts occur. The Tree Map is displayed when an organization or building is selected from the More options in the Select Location panel.
The number of people or contacts is represented by the size and color intensity of the rectangle.
For example, the floor named 'Demo' had the most people visits than other floors in the building.
Likewise, Unique Contacts display the number of contacts that occur in the areas. You can switch between Unique People and Unique Contacts tabs to view corresponding data.
Floor Plan
When you click on a floor in the Tree Map or select a floor in the Select Location panel, the Tree Map displays a Floorplan showing the layout of the customer-defined Spaces. Within each Space is a number representing either the number of Unique People who occupied that Space within the selected date range or the number of Unique Contacts that occurred in that Space during the selected date range.
The darker the color intensity, the greater the number of people or contacts in the space relative to other spaces. You can zoom in and out or reset the floor plan using tools in the toolbar. Hovering the cursor over the floor plan rooms or spaces displays the number of unique people and contacts in that area.
You can switch between the two tabs: Unique People (blue) or Unique Contacts (orange) to display the relevant quantity.
In the example below, Collaboration Area 4 saw an increase in the number of contacts even though the number of people was low. By replacing sofas with chairs and other changes, a significant drop in the number of Contacts was achieved in subsequent weeks.
A significant drop in the number of Contacts in Collaboration Area 4 was noticed after furniture changes were made.
Configure Settings
Configuring the dashboard settings is a system-wide setting that applies to all users. You can change the parameters that determine a contact event, such as proximity and duration. To configure these parameters,
- Login to the Safe application as an admin.
- Click Settings.
- In the settings view, provide values for Proximity and Duration. Refer to the Workplace-Contact-Tracing article for a definition of these terms.
- Click Save. These global settings will update the configuration settings for all users.
