Amazon Location Service

Features

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• Maps
  This Maps Service will let you visualize location information and is the foundation of many LBS capabilities. Amazon Location will provide map tiles of different styles sourced from global location data providers Esri and HERE.
• Places
  Places let you integrate search functionality into your application. It helps to convert addresses into geographic coordinates into street addresses. This service is called ‘reverse geocoding.’
• Routing
  This feature will let you find the routes and estimate travel time based on up-to-date traffic and roadway information.
  It uses Route planning to calculate time and distance for a matrix of routes.
• Geofencing
  This feature will give your application the ability to detect and act when a device enters or exits a defined geographical boundary known as a geofence. When a geofence breach is detected, it automatically sends an entry or exit event to Amazon EventBridge. This can help you to send a notification to a target.
• Trackers
  This feature allows you to retrieve the current and historical location of devices that are running on this service. Trackers will help you reduce costs by filtering position updates that haven’t moved before storing or evaluating them against geofences. These trackers will also take care of the security-related things about your location.

Use Cases

1. Asset Tracking
   Build asset tracking features to help businesses understand the current and historical locations of their products, infrastructure, and personnel. You can also able to build a number of solutions that optimize remote staffing, secure shipment en-route, maximize dispatch efficacy, etc., using the asset tracking features.
   Architecture

source.

This architecture will help you to display asset locations, initiate events, visualize customer device locations, store customer device locations on the map, analyze location history, etc.

Steps to building an Asset tracking application:
Create your geofence collections and link Trackers to them. Reference.
Configure Amazon EventBridge to send notifications to customers or to initiate a process. Reference.
Display your tracked assets and your active geofences on a map. And save location data to long-term storage. Reference.
Once you have built your application, you can use Amazon CloudWatch, and AWS CloudTrail to manage your built application. Reference1, Reference2.

2. User Engagement and geomarketing
You can build solutions that improve user engagement and marketing to target customers. Additionally, you can also be allowed to build geotargeting features so that retailers can send digital flyers or discount codes to customers who are near target stores.
Architecture

source
This architecture will help you to initiate events, visualize customer device locations, store customer device locations on the map, analyze location history, etc.

Steps to build a user engagement and geomarketing application:
Create your geofence collections and link Trackers to them. Reference.
Configure Amazon EventBridge to send notifications to customers who enter or exit a geofenced area of interest. Reference.
Display Customer locations and geofences on a map. And save location data to long-term storage. Reference.
Once you have built your application, you can use Amazon CloudWatch, and AWS CloudTrail to manage your built application. Reference1, Reference2.

3. Delivery
Delivery applications to store, track, and coordinate the departure location, destination, and delivery vehicles. This reduces the wait time and helps maintain the quality of service.
Architecture

source.

This architecture will help you to initiate events based on the proximity of delivery agents, display driver locations as well as pick-up and drop-off locations, store locations of delivery agents on the map, analyze location history, etc.
Steps to build a delivery application:
Create your geofence collections and link Trackers to them. Reference.
Create an AWS Lambda function to automatically add and remove geofences as your orders are booked.
Configure Amazon EventBridge to send notifications to customers and initiate processes. Reference.
Display tracked assets and active geofences on a map. And save location data to long-term storage. Reference.
Once you have built your application, you can use Amazon CloudWatch, and AWS CloudTrail to manage your built application. Reference1, Reference2.

You can refer to more about these cases through this link.

How to Use Amazon Location Service

1. Exploration tools
   To explore and experiment with Amazon location resources, the following tools will help you access and try out the APIs:
   Amazon Location Console: this provides a variety of quick-access tools. The console is also useful for creating resources in preparation for using any of the other methods.
   Amazon Command Line Interface allows to create resources and access the Amazon Location APIs using a terminal. It handles authentication when you configure it with your credentials.
   Example Code and its tutorials will give you a taste of how Amazon Location Service can be implemented.
2. Platform SDKs
   Other than visualizing data on a map, you can use AWS Standard tools to build on AWS. C++, Go, Java, Javascript, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc., are available SDKs.
3. Frontend SDKs and Libraries
   The AWS Amplify libraries help us to integrate Amazon Location within iOS, Android, and Javascript web applications.
   The MapLibre GL libraries let us render 2D and 3D maps from vector data using OpenGL ES within iOS and Android web applications. For javascript, we have Tangram to build web applications.
4. Sending direct HTTPS requests
   If you need more control over how to send a request to AWS other than using programming languages, you can do that by sending direct HTTPS requests that are authenticated by the Signature Version 4 signing process.

    You can refer to more about it through this link.

Regarding Security

At AWS, cloud security is the highest priority. And Security is the shared responsibility that what security they provide, you too need to maintain the same amount of security responsibility.
Security of the cloud
AWS provides you with services that you can able to use securely. Third-party auditors regularly test and verify the effectiveness of our Security as a part of AWS Compliance Programs. Follow the given link to learn more about AWS services in the Scope by Compliance Program.
Security in the cloud
Your responsibility is determined by AWS Service that you can use. You are too responsible for other factors, including the sensitivity of your data, the company’s requirements, and other applicable laws and regulations.
You can refer to the security factors using this link.
So Far, we have discussed so many about the Amazon Location and its provided services. You can refer to more about the code examples and more stuff through this link.

Also see, Amazon Hirepro

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Amazon Location Services?

Amazon Location Services is one of the Location Services. Amazon Location Service (ALS) will let you add data related to maps, points of interest, routing, geocoding, tracking, and geofences.

What are the features of Amazon Location Services?

Amazon Location provides different variety of services. Among these, the main and important features are Maps, Places, Routing, Geofences, and Tracking of the developer’s applications.

Does Amazon Location Services provide Security?

Amazon Location Services provides very good Security. It actually checks all the data that is coming through their associated applications using Signature versions and several other checks.

What are the uses of Amazon Location Services?

The first use case that is very famous in devices or applications developed using Amazon Location Services is User Engagement and GeoMarketing, the second important application type is Delivery applications, and the last one is Asset Tracking.

What is the precision of Amazon Location Service?

Six decimal places are the precision that Amazon Location Service will provide to accept the Location details. That is also equal to 11cm or 4.4 inches at the equator.

Conclusion

This article extensively discussed the concept of Amazon Location Service. We start with a brief introduction, then discuss how it can be used in our applications.

Check out the Amazon Interview Experience to learn about Amazon’s hiring process.

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