What are GPS Breadcrumbing and Location Pings?
GPS Breadcrumbing is the automated, periodic logging of geospatial coordinates at pre-determined intervals to construct a historical trail of worker movement. Location Pings are discrete, single-point requests for location data—either initiated by the worker, triggered automatically by device sensors, or requested remotely by supervisors. Together, these technologies form the foundation of modern lone worker safety systems in Australia.
Understanding the Difference
While frequently conflated in everyday workplace discussions, breadcrumbing and pinging represent distinct operational methodologies with different implications for battery life, data utility, and emergency response effectiveness.
GPS breadcrumbing creates a continuous digital trail, similar to the folklore of Hansel and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs through the forest. Your device automatically records location at regular intervals—every 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour depending on configuration. This allows safety monitors to see your route, speed, and last known position, even if you cannot manually call for help.
Location pings provide a snapshot of presence at a specific moment. You might press a "check-in" button on your phone (active-manual ping), your device might automatically send location when it detects a fall (active-automatic ping), or your supervisor might request your location from a dashboard (passive-remote ping). A ping tells you where someone is now, while breadcrumbing shows where they've been.
For Australian safety professionals, these technologies aren't merely logistical conveniences—they're critical components of the "Safe System of Work" mandated by the Work Health and Safety Act 2011. However, their deployment intersects with complex privacy and surveillance legislation that varies across state boundaries.
How GPS Technology Actually Works
Understanding the technical foundation helps you distinguish between genuine device failures and GPS limitations that could affect safety monitoring.
The Physics of Trilateration
GPS receivers don't transmit their location to satellites—they passively listen for signals broadcast from satellites in Medium Earth Orbit. Each satellite transmits its precise orbital position and the exact time the signal was sent. Your device calculates the Time of Flight for each signal and determines distance based on the speed of light.
By measuring distance to at least four satellites, your device can solve for latitude, longitude, altitude, and internal clock error. Accuracy depends heavily on Line of Sight—an unobstructed path between satellites and your receiver.
The Urban Canyon Effect
In urban environments, high-rise buildings obstruct direct satellite signals, forcing your receiver to rely on reflected signals that have bounced off glass or steel facades. This multipath interference increases the calculated distance, causing GPS drift.
A stationary worker may appear to jump 20 to 50 metres, moving erratically at high speeds, or appearing inside buildings they've never entered. Advanced systems use shadow matching and signal quality analysis to filter out likely reflections, but urban GPS will never match the accuracy of open-sky conditions.
The Battery Trade-Off
Acquiring a GPS fix is energy-intensive. Your device must power the antenna, scan for satellite frequencies, decode data streams, and perform complex calculations.
High-frequency tracking (1 second to 1 minute intervals) keeps the GPS receiver constantly active, providing high-resolution trails but draining wearable device batteries within 8 to 16 hours. Interval tracking (10 minutes to 1 hour) allows the device to enter low-power sleep states between fixes, extending battery life from hours to days or weeks.
Modern safety devices use accelerometers to optimize this trade-off. If you're sitting at a desk, the device suspends GPS acquisition. As soon as you move, it wakes and attempts a fix. This preserves power for genuine emergencies.
Track worker movements without draining device batteries. Smart breadcrumbing adapts to movement patterns and preserves power for emergencies.
Connectivity and Store-and-Forward
The effectiveness of breadcrumbing depends entirely on how location data reaches your monitoring team.
In urban and regional areas, terrestrial cellular networks (4G/5G/NB-IoT) handle most data transmission. However, in coverage black spots, your device must cache breadcrumbs locally. This creates store-and-forward latency—your supervisor only sees the trail once you re-enter coverage. If you're injured in a dead zone, the device may have collected breadcrumbs but cannot transmit them.
For genuine remote work, satellite-enabled devices like Garmin inReach or SPOT are mandatory. These bypass terrestrial towers entirely, transmitting breadcrumbs directly to low-earth or geostationary satellites. Due to satellite bandwidth costs, breadcrumb intervals are typically lower (10 to 30 minutes rather than 1 to 5 minutes).
The Australian Legal Framework
Implementing GPS tracking in Australia requires navigating a complex web of privacy and surveillance laws that differ significantly across states. There is no single national "GPS Law"—compliance involves the intersection of federal privacy obligations and state-based workplace surveillance statutes.
Federal Privacy Act 1988
For organisations with annual turnover exceeding $3 million, the Privacy Act applies. GPS data linked to specific workers constitutes personal information. You must collect it only when reasonably necessary for your functions (such as ensuring worker safety), and you must notify employees before or at the time of collection.
Future reforms will likely require explicit consent for collecting precise geolocation data, reflecting community concerns about its intrusive nature.
New South Wales: Workplace Surveillance Act 2005
NSW maintains the strictest requirements. You must provide 14 days' written notice before surveillance commences, specifying the kind of surveillance, how it will be carried out, when it starts, and whether it's continuous or intermittent.
If you're tracking vehicles, you must display visible notices on each vehicle. Critically, it is illegal to track employees when they're not at work. Tracking mixed-use vehicles during personal time without disabling GPS can attract criminal penalties of up to 50 penalty units per offence.
Victoria: Surveillance Devices Act 1999
Victoria requires express or implied consent to install tracking devices. An interesting legal interpretation exists around smartphones—their primary purpose is communication, not tracking, potentially placing them outside the strict definition of "tracking device." However, relying on this technicality is legally perilous. Best practice treats smartphones running tracking apps as tracking devices requiring consent.
Other Jurisdictions
The ACT requires 14 days' notice plus good faith consultation. Western Australia generally requires consent. Queensland, Tasmania, and South Australia lack specific workplace surveillance statutes comparable to NSW, relying instead on general surveillance device laws and Fair Work Act protections regarding reasonable workplace directions.
GPS as a WHS Risk Control
While privacy laws restrict surveillance, WHS laws effectively mandate monitoring in certain contexts. This creates regulatory tension you must actively manage—balancing the duty to monitor safety against the duty to respect privacy.
Under the Model WHS Act Section 19, you must eliminate or minimise risks to health and safety so far as reasonably practicable. This duty extends to remote or isolated work—defined as work where assistance is not readily available. A community nurse performing home visits, a security guard patrolling an empty warehouse, or a field technician servicing equipment alone all qualify as isolated workers.
Regulation 48 of the Model WHS Regulations specifically requires you to have a system for effective communication with remote workers. The Code of Practice mandates that communication systems must allow workers to call for help at any time, listing personal security systems and satellite communication as valid control measures.
| Hazard Scenario | Risk Description | GPS Control Mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| Incapacitation | Worker suffers snake bite, vehicle accident, or cardiac event in remote area and cannot call | Breadcrumbing allows you to see route and movement cessation. Last known location narrows search radius from hundreds of square kilometres to a specific vector. |
| Duress / Violence | Worker threatened by member of public and cannot speak freely | Silent alarm sends ping with exact coordinates to monitoring centre, enabling police dispatch without voice verification. |
| Environmental Exposure | Worker becomes lost in bushland without landmarks | Breadcrumb trail allows rescuers to retrace exact path to locate worker, even if they've wandered off designated tracks. |
Industry bodies like the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers recommend risk-based intervals: high-risk work requires continuous tracking or 30-minute intervals, while low-risk office work may only need 4 to 8-hour intervals.
Our system automatically disables tracking outside work hours and restricts access to safety personnel only, not line managers.
GPS as a Psychosocial Hazard
The 2024 Model Code of Practice for Managing Psychosocial Hazards explicitly lists "intrusive surveillance" as a hazard that can cause anxiety, stress, and loss of worker autonomy.
Workers often perceive GPS as a tool for micromanagement—"Why was your van stopped for 15 minutes at the coffee shop?" This perception erodes trust and can lead to harmful behaviours like device sabotage. The temptation for managers to use safety data for performance management is high, but this function creep is often illegal if not specifically notified, and it destroys safety culture.
You must apply the hierarchy of controls to manage this psychosocial risk. If tracking is necessary for safety, minimise psychological impact through strict governance, role-based access limitations, and automatic disabling when workers are safe or off-duty.
Technical Limitations and Operational Failures
Despite its utility, GPS breadcrumbing is not infallible. Over-reliance without supporting procedures creates a false sense of security.
False Alarms and Alarm Fatigue
If you set geofences too tightly, GPS drift in urban canyons can trigger "worker left site" alarms erroneously. Repeated false alarms lead to alarm fatigue—supervisors eventually ignore valid alerts. Battery death also ends the breadcrumb trail, potentially triggering unnecessary emergency responses.
Common Device Failures
Operational reviews consistently highlight specific failure modes: device not charged (most common), device left in vehicle while worker performs tasks (rendering man-down detection useless), and signal blocking from metal toolboxes or deep backpack storage acting as Faraday cages.
GPS Accuracy Defences
When GPS data is used as evidence in workplace investigations or dismissals, workers often claim GPS drift or device failure. You must distinguish between 50-metre urban canyon drift and a worker being 50 kilometres off-site. Always check the HDOP (Horizontal Dilution of Precision) value—if HDOP exceeds 5, the data is unreliable and should not be used for disciplinary purposes.
Implementation Best Practices
Balancing safety benefits with legal and ethical obligations requires a strategic framework.
Policy and Notification
Don't rely on generic IT usage policies. Create a specific GPS and Remote Safety Monitoring Policy that explicitly states what is tracked, when (e.g., 8 AM to 5 PM), and why (safety). Issue formal Notices of Surveillance at least 14 days before activation, adhering to NSW/ACT templates as national best practice. Place "Vehicle under GPS Surveillance" stickers on all fleet vehicles.
The Safety-Only Firewall
Implement strict separation between safety data and HR/performance data. Only safety managers and emergency response teams should have real-time access to granular breadcrumb data. Line managers should receive only exception reports like "Missed Check-in." Purge GPS data after 3 to 6 months unless required for incident investigation.
Technology Selection Criteria
Match technology to risk profile. For urban lone workers, use smartphone apps with man-down detection and timed check-ins, ensuring privacy modes that stop tracking when shifts end. For remote outback workers, use dedicated satellite devices with 10 to 30 minute breadcrumb intervals. For mixed-use vehicles, install physical privacy switches that disable GPS transmission outside working hours.
Risk-Based Interval Configuration
Don't default to real-time tracking for everyone. High-speed driving might need 1 to 2 minute intervals, walking patrols need 5 to 10 minutes, and stationary office work should rely on hourly updates or check-ins only.
References
- Safe Work Australia. (2024). Managing the work environment and facilities. Commonwealth of Australia. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au
- Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 No 47 (NSW). https://legislation.nsw.gov.au
- Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. (2024). Workplace monitoring and surveillance. https://www.oaic.gov.au
- Safe Work Australia. (2024). Model Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work. Commonwealth of Australia. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au
- British Standards Institution. (2022). BS 8484:2022 Lone worker device systems. Code of practice. BSI Standards Limited.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you track a worker's company vehicle on the weekend?
Generally, no. In NSW, it's explicitly prohibited to track employees when they're not at work. In other states, it carries significant privacy risks. Best practice is to automatically disable tracking or mask data outside rostered hours. Tracking during personal time without clear safety justification and express consent is likely unlawful under workplace surveillance legislation and the Privacy Act.
Is GPS breadcrumbing a legal requirement for remote work?
Not explicitly. The law requires "effective communication" with remote workers. GPS is one control measure to achieve this. If you can demonstrate that radio check-ins are equally effective for your specific risk profile, GPS isn't mandatory. However, it's considered industry good practice, and failing to use it could be argued as failure to provide reasonably practicable safety measures in a coroner's court.
A worker claims the GPS is wrong and they were at the job site. Is this possible?
Yes. GPS drift or urban canyon effects can place a worker hundreds of metres from their true location. Always check the accuracy or HDOP (Horizontal Dilution of Precision) value in raw data before making accusations. If HDOP exceeds 5, the data is unreliable and should not be used for disciplinary purposes.
Does man-down detection work if the device is in a pocket?
Often not reliably. Man-down systems typically rely on tilt sensors detecting orientation changes from vertical to horizontal, plus impact sensors. If the device is loose in a pocket, it may tumble and trigger false alarms, or fail to detect falls if you land in a seated position. Devices worn on belt clips or lanyards generally offer better detection accuracy.
What happens when there's no mobile coverage?
GPS positioning works independently of mobile networks—it only receives satellite signals. Your device can acquire location and store breadcrumbs locally even without cellular coverage. However, transmitting alerts to supervisors requires connectivity. Professional systems implement store-and-forward, caching events and syncing when coverage returns. For remote work requiring real-time alerts, satellite communication devices like Iridium are mandatory.