Add geofences - Amazon Location Service
Create a geofence collectionDraw geofencesAdding polygon geofencesAdding circular geofences

Add geofences

Geofences contain points and vertices that form a closed boundary, which defines an area of interest. Geofence collections store and manage one or multiple geofences.

Amazon Location geofence collections stores geofences defined by using a standard geospatial data format called GeoJSON (RFC 7946). You can use tools, such as geojson.io, at no charge to draw your geofences graphically and save the output GeoJSON file.

Note

Amazon Location doesn't support polygons with holes, multipolygons, clockwise polygons, and geofences that cross the antimeridian.

Create a geofence collection

Create a geofence collection to store and manage geofences by using the Amazon Location console, the AWS CLI, or the Amazon Location APIs.

Console

To create a geofence collection using the Amazon Location console

  1. Open the Amazon Location Service console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/location/.

  2. In the left navigation pane, choose Geofence collections.

  3. Choose Create geofence collection.

  4. Fill out the following boxes:

    • Name – Enter a unique name. For example, ExampleGeofenceCollection. Maximum 100 characters. Valid entries include alphanumeric characters, hyphens, periods, and underscores.

    • Description – Enter an optional description to differentiate your resources.

  5. Under EventBridge rule with CloudWatch as a target, you can create an optional EventBridge rule to get started reacting to geofence events. This enables Amazon Location to publish events to Amazon CloudWatch Logs.

  6. (Optional) Under Tags, enter a tag Key and Value. This adds a tag your new geofence collection. For more information, see Tagging your Amazon Location Service resources.

  7. (Optional) Under Customer managed key encryption, you can choose to Add a customer managed key. This adds a symmetric customer managed key that you create, own, and manage over the default AWS owned encryption. For more information, see Encrypting data at rest.

  8. Choose Create geofence collection.

API

To create a geofence collection using the Amazon Location APIs

Use the CreateGeofenceCollection operation from the Amazon Location Geofences APIs.

The following example uses an API request to create a geofence collection called ExampleGeofenceCollection. The geofence collection is associated with a customer managed AWS KMS key to encrypt customer data.

POST /geofencing/v0/collections
Content-type: application/json

{
   "CollectionName": "ExampleGeofenceCollection",
   "Description": "Geofence collection 1 for shopping center",
   "KmsKeyId": "1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab",
   "Tags": { 
      "Tag1" : "Value1"
   }
}
AWS CLI

To create a geofence collection using AWS CLI commands

Use the create-geofence-collection command.

The following example uses an AWS CLI to create a geofence collection called ExampleGeofenceCollection. The geofence collection is associated with a customer managed AWS KMS key to encrypt customer data.

aws location \
  create-geofence-collection \
  --collection-name "ExampleGeofenceCollection" \
  --description "Shopping center geofence collection" \
  --kms-key-id "1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab" \
  --tags Tag1=Value1
Note

Billing depends on your usage. You may incur fees for the use of other AWS services. For more information, see Amazon Location Service pricing.

Draw geofences

Now that you've created your geofence collection, you can define your geofences. Geofences are defined either as a polygon or as a circle. To draw a polygon geofence you can use a GeoJSON editing tool, such as geojson.io.

To create a geofence as a circle, you must define the center point of the circle, and the radius. For example, if you want to create a geofence to be notified whenever a device comes within 50 meters of a specific location, you would use the latitude and longitude of that location and specify the radius as 50 meters.

Using the Amazon Location Service APIs, you can also add metadata to your geofence, in the form of key-value pairs. These can be useful for storing information about the geofence, such as its type, or other information that is specific to your application. You can use this metadata when Reacting to Amazon Location Service events with Amazon EventBridge.

Adding polygon geofences

This section describes creating polygon geofences

Draw geofences using a GeoJSON tool

Now that you've created your geofence collection, you can define your geofences by using a GeoJSON editing tool, such as geojson.io.

To create a GeoJSON file

  1. Open a GeoJSON editing tool. For example, geojson.io.

  2. Choose the Draw a polygon icon and draw your area of interest.

  3. Choose Save, then choose GeoJSON from the dropdown menu.

Put GeoJSON geofences in a geofence collection

You can use the resulting GeoJSON file to upload your geofences using the Amazon Location Service console, the AWS CLI, or the Amazon Location APIs:

Console

To add a geofence to a geofence collection using the Amazon Location Service console

  1. Open the Amazon Location Service console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/location/.

  2. In the left navigation pane, choose Geofence collections.

  3. From the Geofence collections list, select the name link for the target geofence collection.

  4. Under Geofences, choose Create geofences.

  5. In the Add geofences window, drag, and drop your GeoJSON into the window.

  6. Choose Add geofences.

API

To add geofences using the Amazon Location APIs

Use the PutGeofence operation from the Amazon Location Geofences APIs.

The following example uses an API request to add a geofence given the ID GEOFENCE-EXAMPLE1 to a geofence collection called ExampleGeofenceCollection. It also specifies a single geofence metadata property with the key Type and value loadingArea.

PUT /geofencing/v0/collections/ExampleGeofenceCollection/geofence/GEOFENCE-EXAMPLE1
    Content-type: application/json
    
    {
       "GeofenceProperties": {
          "Type" : "loadingArea"
       },
       "Geometry": { 
          "Polygon": [   
            [
                [-5.716667, -15.933333],
                [-14.416667, -7.933333],
                [-12.316667, -37.066667],
                [-5.716667, -15.933333]
            ]
          ]
       }
    }

Alternatively, you can add more than one geofence using the BatchPutGeofence operation. 

POST /geofencing/v0/collections/ExampleGeofenceCollection/put-geofences
    Content-type: application/json
    
    {
       "Entries": [ 
          {
             "GeofenceProperties": {
                "Type" : "loadingArea"
             },
             "GeofenceId": "GEOFENCE-EXAMPLE1",
             "Geometry": { 
                "Polygon": [ 
                   [ 
                      [-5.716667, -15.933333],
                      [-14.416667, -7.933333],
                      [-12.316667, -37.066667],
                      [-5.716667, -15.933333]
                   ]
                ]
             }
          }
       ]
    }
AWS CLI

To add a geofence to a geofence collection using AWS CLI commands

Use the put-geofence command.

The following example uses an AWS CLI to add a geofence to a geofence collection called ExampleGeofenceCollection.

$ aws location \
        put-geofence \
            --collection-name ExampleGeofenceCollection \
            --geofence-id ExampleGeofenceTriangle \
            --geofence-properties '{"Type": "loadingArea"}' \
            --geometry 'Polygon=[[[-5.716667, -15.933333],[-14.416667, -7.933333],[-12.316667, -37.066667],[-5.716667, -15.933333]]]'
    {
        "CreateTime": "2020-11-11T00:16:14.487000+00:00",
        "GeofenceId": "ExampleGeofenceTriangle",
        "UpdateTime": "2020-11-11T00:19:59.894000+00:00"
    }

Adding circular geofences

This section describes creating circular geofences. You must know the latitude and longitude of the point that you want to be the center of the circle, and the radius in meters of the circle. You can create circular geofences with the Amazon Location APIs or the AWS CLI.

API

To add circular geofences using the Amazon Location APIs

Use the PutGeofence operation from the Amazon Location Geofences APIs.

The following example uses an API request to add a geofence given the ID GEOFENCE-EXAMPLE2 to a geofence collection called ExampleGeofenceCollection:

PUT /geofencing/v0/collections/ExampleGeofenceCollection/geofence/GEOFENCE-EXAMPLE2
    Content-type: application/json
    
    {
       "Geometry": { 
          "Circle": {   
            "Center": [-5.716667, -15.933333],
            "Radius": 50
          }
       }
    }
AWS CLI

To add a circular geofence to a geofence collection using AWS CLI commands

Use the put-geofence command.

The following example uses an AWS CLI to add a geofence to a geofence collection called ExampleGeofenceCollection.

$ aws location \
        put-geofence \
            --collection-name ExampleGeofenceCollection \
            --geofence-id ExampleGeofenceCircle \
            --geometry 'Circle={Center=[-5.716667, -15.933333], Radius=50}'
Note

You can also put JSON for complex geometry into its own file as in the following example.

$ aws location \
        put-geofence \
            --collection-name ExampleGeofenceCollection \
            --geofence-id ExampleGeofenceCircle \
            --geometry file:circle.json

In the example, the circle.json file includes JSON for the circle geometry.

{
    "Circle": {
        "Center": [-74.006975, 40.717127],
        "Radius": 287.7897969218057
    }
}