Geofence Flapping: Debouncing Entry and Exit Signals in Fleet Backends

GPS drift can cause a vehicle near a geofence boundary to repeatedly register entry and exit events even though it entered only once. This behaviour, known as geofence flapping, can produce inaccurate arrival reports, duplicate notifications, unreliable dwell-time figures, and faulty automated workflows. The article notes that the cause is not always poor hardware, since boundary size, update frequency, and event-processing logic also shape how the backend reads movement. It recommends stabilizing events through state management and rules that separate real movement from temporary location noise. Suggested techniques include storing raw location data separately from derived events and using hysteresis, with distinct inner and outer thresholds for entry and exit.