Secure Asset Reporting Services, or SARS, is a tracking system developed by Yutana Barge Lines and Yukon Fuel Co. Inc., Alaska-based subsidiaries of Northland Holdings Inc. of Seattle. The system has been in use for about a year on the company's ocean-going vessels and on tugs and barges on the Yukon, Kuskokwim and Tanana rivers.

It has since been sold to trucking, aviation and marine companies worldwide, including to some of the company's competitors in Alaska, said Clayton Shelver, vice president of Anchorage-based SARS and Yukon Fuel Co.

Special sensors also are being developed to work with the system that will allow companies to monitor such things as temperatures in refrigerated containers or fuel levels at remote fuel tank farms.

"I think we've just kind of scratched the surface on what we have developed here," Shelver said. "It was developed by Alaskans for Alaska and now it has international interest."

SARS is based on the U.S. Department of Defense's Global Positioning System, which uses signals from multiple satellites to compute position, velocity and elevation. SARS uses a special unit about the size of a videotape to receive GPS information and retransmit it to the Internet via satellite.

The Web-based interface developed by SARS allows a company to track an "asset" via encrypted e-mail, at intervals of 15 minutes to 24 hours, said Shelver, who helped design SARS.

Only those authorized by a company would be privy to the tracking information over the Internet, Shelver said.

Since SARS is directly associated with its subsidiary shipping and fuel companies, and the system is being sold to competing companies, Shelver said SARS will be structured as its own entity soon, to dispel any perception that proprietary information may be compromised.

"The goal is to spin off into a completely separate company within a year," Shelver said.

Anyone who can operate a desktop computer can run SARS, said Louis Jennings, marketing manager for SARS in Anchorage.

It's also inexpensive. Computer hardware and one receiver, which is being manufactured in Israel, costs about $2,000, Jennings said. Round-the-clock technical support services provided from the Anchorage-based company runs about $70 a month.

"It doesn't cost an arm and a leg," Shelver said.

Yutana Barge Lines has been in continuous operation on the Yukon River since 1916. The company, based in Nenana, operates 35 barges and 12 tugs throughout Western Alaska. Sister company Yukon Fuel ships millions of gallons of fuel annually by barge to remote villages in the state.

Shelver said the companies had for years tried to find a system of tracking freight and fuel, but found nothing that was consistently accurate. When customers would call wanting to know the status of their shipments, the fuel and freight companies would scramble to raise ship crews via cellular telephone or marine radio, communications links that were expensive and unreliable, Shelver said.

At least a dozen versions of SARS were tested over the years, until the current system was developed, Shelver said.

"Some worked, some didn't," Shelver said.

The entire system was designed by employees of the freight and fuel companies in Anchorage, he said.

By logging on to the Internet, company officials can find what they are tracking and contact drivers, pilots or ships' captains via e-mail. The shipments' path is marked by dots on a computer monitor, based on the automatic reports from the field.

"Our system works anywhere in the world, and can track any asset, fixed or mobile," Jennings said.

In February SARS is installing special sensors on fuel tanks in Fort Yukon and in Palmer to monitor levels and to detect any leakage. The sensors, which have been tested to withstand temperatures of minus 65, also will be able to detect if anything other than fuel is present in the tanks, such as water.

The remote fuel system monitoring will have widespread application in Alaska, where hundreds of fuel tanks are spread around the state.

"Every village with a school or a power utility has them," Shelver said.

To check levels now, a worker must climb onto the fuel tank, a dangerous and often inaccurate approach, Shelver said. With the SARS system, a worker in an Anchorage office or elsewhere will be able to tell how much fuel is in the tank, or if it's leaking, simply by logging on to the system via the Internet.

The company has shown the system to state Department of Environmental Conservation officials, who Shelver said were impressed with the technology.

Shelver points out that no government grant money or loans were used in developing the fuel tank monitoring system.

SARS can be linked to sensors on truck, ship or airplane engines to check performance and fuel efficiency, Shelver said.

The applications are limitless, Shelver said. He suspects there may be a market for owners of remote cabins or home owners who could monitor their buildings from anywhere in the world, to see if the structures have frozen or have been vandalized.