"As organisations expand globally, they become increasingly susceptible to these threats," he says. "The need to protect mobile forces and the requirements of international agencies to operate over large and remote areas demands sophisticated systems for secure operations."

Intergraph Corporation is a worldwide provider of computer aided engineering solutions. It is represented in South Africa by Intergraph Systems Southern Africa, formerly Intertech Systems. Intertech, a subsidiary of IT group Fintech, was recently involved in a joint venture with black IT and telecommunications empowerment company Ikwezi Group. The company is now majority held by Ikwezi.

Intergraph security systems harness the potential of information technology in order to improve warning and analytic capabilities in achieving the highest possible levels of physical and operational security in protecting mobile assets of industries and governments around the world.

Designed for use by Government departments as well as industrial and commercial concerns, the Intergraph SecureTrack security solution is a GIS-based tracking and management system. It offers a cost-effective tool for a host of fleet management applications - ranging from military convoy and truck routing, to the management of hazardous material transport and the control of emergency response and service departments.

Based on Intergraph's popular GeoMedia GIS and the familiar Microsoft Windows NT operating system, SecureTrack uses satellite technology to track mobile assets which are equipped with a location transponder and graphically display their geographic position against a georeferenced map background.

Every tracked asset is assigned a unique identification and tracked for position, speed, and direction. Simple map loading interfaces facilitate the management of fleets, and data relating to every vehicle's driver, cargo and current job is easily accessible. In addition, fleet operations can be confined to a specific area, with the activation of an alarm if a vehicle exits from its assigned coverage area.

A variety of display options enable the operator to zoom on the location of an asset or trace its movement. An automatic view update places a selected asset in constant operator view. A variety of auto-routing options - such as the determination of the shortest useable path from a tracked asset to its destination - prove their use when response or delivery times are critical.

SecureTrack has been designed with ease of use as a primary aim, and it has several unique features:

* Playback of the event log provides a graphical replay of the movements of selected assets.

* Intuitive operator playback control allows play, rewind, pause, single step, and stop play of the playback data.

* Back-up, purged and compress utilities are provided for event log management.

* Coverage areas are highly flexible.

* A variety of display options enable the customisation of the operator's view of the tracked image symbol, size, colour, text identification or directional indicator.

* Troubleshooting and support via online help utilities provides instantaneous answers to general and specific questions regarding every aspect of an installed SecureTrack system.

All Intergraph security products are fully compatible with each other, as with other vendor offerings and can be easily integrated with existing wireless communications media such as RF, cellular and microwave.

Intergraph Systems

Southern Africa

(011) 313 1222

pvjaarsveld@intch.co.za