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A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

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Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

#31

Post by monkmartinez »

Zikes wrote: post #29
monkmartinez wrote: post #25

First responder here. I am a professional Firefighter/EMT in Arizona. Its not just 911 calls from cell phones, its the whole stack. This will hopefully illustrate the problems we have; Last night we were dispatched to an MVA (accident) with injuries. The 911 call came in from a passer by on a cell phone, but gave the wrong address. A police officer near by, responded as well. When the officer arrived, he told Dispatc…

I'd be interested to know exactly why Google Maps would be too expensive. Is it the licensing of the maps from Google that costs too much, or the development of new software to use the new map source data? In the case of the former, I wonder if OpenStreetMap is any better than CAD Maps' existing map source.

I'd be interested to know as well, my current pay grade isn't privileged to that information. When they rolled the system out, we all collectively sighed when we saw the mapping. To be fair, however, our maps must have hydrant information. The county/city GIS people provide the maps we use.... I suspect the crazy layers of bureaucracy and COST! is to blame. Cities are strapped for cash and IT folks are dumping government jobs faster than a downvote on reddit. Truth be told, I don't blame them...

Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

#32

Post by underscoremark »

Spooky23 wrote: post #18
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #5

While 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.

The issue is that GPS is not as accurate as a landline port assignment lookup. 20 years ago, if a toddler dialed 911, the 911 operator knew what building or floor a call came from. That's just fundamental. It's not surveillance state stuff. At one time, this problem was limited to a smaller population of cellphone users. Most people in one of these horrible car accident situations, etc didn't have access to a cellpho…

I think that GPS would be accurate enough, in many cases, like traffic accidents. However, GPS capabilities require Wireless Phase II, which is not always available. Otherwise, the location being presented to the PSAP is that of the cell phone tower.

Speaking on the disappearance of land-lines, another issue is the increase of VoIP subscribers. Keeping address information up-to-date is the responsibility of the subscriber. If they take their VoIP service to the cottage, and call 911, emergency service could be dispatched to their home residence instead.

Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

#33

Post by monkmartinez »

rdl wrote: post #12

I wish there were a premium 911 smartphone application for the public or maybe even somewhat-trained members of the public. Rather than a single number to call, show me the resources available in my local area, in realtime -- distances to a level I/II trauma facility, hazmat, fire, police, tactical, etc. (some of this might be restricted for security reasons, but "infinite" resources like a police hq or hospital woul…

Resources. My city has a massive problem with retention of IT folk and I suspect this to be the case in lots of other municipalities. Your ideas are awesome, but we can't even manage to get laptops that sit next to each other to communicate and/or share data. There is no comprehensive suite of Fire/EMS software and hardware that I am aware of. It is 100% piece meal and the people making the decisions don't really understand technology.

Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

#34

Post by taejo »

wlesieutre wrote: post #7
modeless wrote: post #2

Is 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…

If you're in a closet, your phone probably can't get a GPS signal, unfortunately.

Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

#35

Post by rdl »

monkmartinez wrote: post #33
rdl wrote: post #12

I wish there were a premium 911 smartphone application for the public or maybe even somewhat-trained members of the public. Rather than a single number to call, show me the resources available in my local area, in realtime -- distances to a level I/II trauma facility, hazmat, fire, police, tactical, etc. (some of this might be restricted for security reasons, but "infinite" resources like a police hq or hospital woul…

Resources. My city has a massive problem with retention of IT folk and I suspect this to be the case in lots of other municipalities. Your ideas are awesome, but we can't even manage to get laptops that sit next to each other to communicate and/or share data. There is no comprehensive suite of Fire/EMS software and hardware that I am aware of. It is 100% piece meal and the people making the decisions don't really und…

Right -- the solution (I think) would be to sell this as a packaged service, initially to the well-funded "house fire departments" at industrial facilities, and then maybe to places like airport departments, and to geographic agencies with funding. Minimizing the local customizations and local IT support. (I am pretty familiar with the nuclear plant systems, and with military and military airfield systems, but I think they're fairly similar to most profitable/regulated/compliant industrial sites like major refineries.)

Essentially drchrono or practice fusion for EMS/fire/police/etc -- less featureful and customizable than the existing solutions, but vastly easier to deploy.

Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

#36

Post by monkmartinez »

frik wrote: post #17

It should be the other way! Smartphones should have an emergency button. Pressing the button should automatically call 911 (or 112) and speaking using a Text-To-Speech TTS software (Siri, etc.) the name of the phone owner and the GPS coordinate, street address, etc. This technology is already built in e.g. Ford cars (using Nuance/Microsoft speech technology, using automatic Bluetooth to call via the phone) - at the s…

A 911 button exists! The people that have them use them often... Google: 911 system for elderly

Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

#37

Post by Rynant »

dpatrick86 wrote: post #6

Serious 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?

Implementing SMS for 911 is not simple. First of all, many 911 call centers (PSAPs) still use analog equipment [1]

For those PSAPs that do have NG911 equipment, managing an SMS "call" is tricky because SMS messages are not sent on a persistent connection. Each message requires routing through the wireless network to a selective router which then routes the call to a PSAP, and the PSAP routes the message to a call taker. So somehow subsequent messages need to be able to find their way to the same call taker that handled the first message.

- How do all of the routing points know what "call" each message belongs to?

- How do they know when the call ends?

- What happens when the caller's location changes and the wireless network routes through a new selective router?

- What if a PSAP is busy or offline? Unlike normal SMS, messages need to be re-routed.

- 911 calls need to be recorded. Who is responsible for storing the SMS conversations? Sometimes PSAPs are required by a state to record conversations. If the SMS solution is a web-hosted application, state laws may need amending to allow the application provider to record the SMS conversation.

The wireless network, selective router, and PSAP equipment may each be managed by a different entity, so it requires new laws, standards and equipment to coordinate a 911 SMS conversation correctly compared to normal SMS calls where the number that is being sent to maps to a single subscriber.

[1] http://www.911.gov/ng911_law/whatisng911.html

Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

#38

Post by lutusp »

modeless wrote: post #21
lutusp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is anyone working on something better than signal strength triangulation for cell tower based positioning? First, cell towers do better than mere signal strength triangulation -- they use signal arrival time and round-trip time to get a pretty good fix on a phone's location. Not nearly as good as GPS, but reasonably good. Second, smartphones have GPS receivers, and some of those allow the GPS position to accompany…

>they use signal arrival time and round-trip time Do you have a source for this? As far as I know this is not true. They use signal strength and knowledge of cell tower antenna locations, but not time of flight of the radio signal, as GPS does.

Just a handful, and most of them are pretty vague:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking

Quote: "Using the SIM in GSM and UMTS handsets, it is possible to obtain raw radio measurements from the handset.[6][7] The measurements that are available can include the serving Cell ID, round-trip time, and signal strength. "

http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2012/06/01/cell-tower-tri...

Quote: "Within each sector, the tower can make a measurement of how far away the transmitting cell phone is. This is done by measuring signal strength and the round-trip signal time."

Neither of the above references is very specific, but I recently read a paper that went into great detail, and showed graphs of the areas with the greatest accuracy, all based on arrival time measurements. Some of it may have been speculative based on future improvements in the system. But I can't locate that specific paper.

Here's another reference:

http://www.cnet.com/news/feds-push-for-tracking-cell-phones/

Quote: "T-Mobile, for instance, uses a GSM technology called Uplink Time Difference of Arrival, or U-TDOA, which calculates a position based on precisely how long it takes signals to reach towers. A company called TruePosition, which provides U-TDOA services to T-Mobile, boasts of "accuracy to under 50 meters" that's available "for start-of-call, midcall, or when idle.""

You know, now that I've read these articles, it sounds more like a future technology than something that's in place right now, except for a few networks.

Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

#39

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

afarrell wrote: post #11
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #5

While 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.

Someone who is calling 911 (or 999) should have no expectation of privacy from the government as to their location.

To my knowledge, there is no special back channel through which your cell phone will transmit GPS data to the dispatcher when you place a 911 call. The telco will always have access to cell tower triangulation data, which can be shared with 911 services (or law enforcement), but in general they are not being fed GPS or WiFi geolocation from your smartphone OS's location service (unless I just don't know about it).

To get that kind of data from your OS to a 911 dispatcher simply by placing a call would be to concede the ability for that kind of data to be leaked over telephony at all, or otherwise constantly uploaded to telcos/authorities.

Re: A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

#40

Post by sgarman »

Zikes wrote: post #29
monkmartinez wrote: post #25

First responder here. I am a professional Firefighter/EMT in Arizona. Its not just 911 calls from cell phones, its the whole stack. This will hopefully illustrate the problems we have; Last night we were dispatched to an MVA (accident) with injuries. The 911 call came in from a passer by on a cell phone, but gave the wrong address. A police officer near by, responded as well. When the officer arrived, he told Dispatc…

I'd be interested to know exactly why Google Maps would be too expensive. Is it the licensing of the maps from Google that costs too much, or the development of new software to use the new map source data? In the case of the former, I wonder if OpenStreetMap is any better than CAD Maps' existing map source.

Is it possible to license full offline copies of Google Maps - that would be a requirement for sure.
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