A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
washingtonpost.com
A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
#2Is anyone working on something better than signal strength triangulation for cell tower based positioning? It seems crazy to me that we can get accuracy of a few meters using weak signals from satellites in space, while the strong signals from nearby cell towers give you only kilometer level accuracy.
Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
#3Wouldn't a smart phone enable GPS automatically to try to get a more accurate location when 911 is dialed? Obviously this doesn't help with phones that have no GPS, but I would think with the amount of smart phones in use today it wouldn't be a big of an issue.
Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
#4Obviously, the problem is not the technology, it's an antiquated government. A government that is run by bureaucrats, that don't know how to properly leverage technology, especially satellite technology.
Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
#5While this does describe a real problem that we want to address, article reads like surveillance propaganda. I think it reads that way because of strong implication that cell phone technology is bad because it does not allow authorities to obtain quick geolocation fix on a cell phone.
Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
#6Serious question... why can't I SMS 911? This article focuses on geolocation data... which is fine. But what about cases where a person is unable to speak verbally because of either physical impairment, or because they are afraid or otherwise unable to do so?
This would be so easy to implement, can it even really be said to be a technology problem?
Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
#7Is anyone working on something better than signal strength triangulation for cell tower based positioning? It seems crazy to me that we can get accuracy of a few meters using weak signals from satellites in space, while the strong signals from nearby cell towers give you only kilometer level accuracy.
Generally speaking, cell phones today already know where they are with pretty good accuracy. So the most obvious solution would be to have a standardized system for a phone to send its GPS/wifi based position to the 911 center.
In some cases the caller is not able to communicate verbally because they're choking, hiding in the closet from an intruder, or any number of other reasons. In those situations, being able to reach 911 by SMS would allow them to give a location. You can't yet, but it's being worked on.
Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
#8Serious question... why can't I SMS 911? This article focuses on geolocation data... which is fine. But what about cases where a person is unable to speak verbally because of either physical impairment, or because they are afraid or otherwise unable to do so? This would be so easy to implement, can it even really be said to be a technology problem?
> In an agreement with NENA and APCO, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon have voluntarily committed to provide text-to-911 service by May 15, 2014 in all areas served by their networks where a 911 call center is prepared to receive texts.
Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
#9Is anyone working on something better than signal strength triangulation for cell tower based positioning? It seems crazy to me that we can get accuracy of a few meters using weak signals from satellites in space, while the strong signals from nearby cell towers give you only kilometer level accuracy.
Google uses a combination of GPS and nearby wifi signals to figure out where you are, and it is astonishingly effective. I enabled location history for a day and could see data points for different rooms in my apartment. If any random app can access that data, I wonder why they don't integrate it with the E911 feature that's already built into android.
Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology
#10While this does describe a real problem that we want to address, article reads like surveillance propaganda. I think it reads that way because of strong implication that cell phone technology is bad because it does not allow authorities to obtain quick geolocation fix on a cell phone.
> ... surveillance propaganda. I think it reads that way because of strong implication that cell phone technology is bad because it does not allow authorities to obtain quick geolocation fix on a cell phone.
That may be, but not being able to locate people in an emergency is a legitimate problem, and it's happening because people are ditching their landlines (which did have known locations).
I live on the shore of Puget Sound in Washington State, right by the water. This means my cell phone is much more likely to connect with a cell tower on the opposite shore -- and people on the opposite bank get connected to cell towers on this side. This means depending on a cell tower for location is totally misleading for all these people. The only people who can be automatically located are those who (a) have smartphones with built-in GPS, (b) the GPS location is set to be included with each call, and (c) are outdoors when they make the call.
It's a mess, and conspiracy theories aside, it needs to be fixed.