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A survey of 911 dispatchers reveals the cost of bad technology

washingtonpost.com

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

#41

Post by dublinben »

sgarman wrote: post #40
Zikes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, which is why projects like OpenStreetMap are so important!

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

#42

Post by rdl »

sgarman wrote: post #40
Zikes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google Earth Enterprise. http://www.google.com/enterprise/mapsearth/products/earthent...

This doesn't come with the maps data itself, though.

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

#43

Post by frik »

monkmartinez wrote: post #36
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

It's not only about elderly.

Imagine you have a stroke, or your hands are full of blood, or you fall and brake your hands ...then you cannot use your touch screen smartphone and/or speak comprehensible words!

In such emergency situations a text-to-speech would save life's. You may be able to press a physical button or the G-sensor detects the accident and reacts automatically.

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

#44

Post by neil1 »

mmagin wrote: post #19
neil1 wrote: post #4

Obviously, 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.

I think it would also be reasonable to place some blame on telephone company monopolies/duopolies who are in a comfortable, profitable place and resistant to change.

Exactly, but I think one of the problems is that since government is filled with bureaucrats, who don't understand how easy it is to implement this, they instead listen to the phone company lobbyists, who says "this will be incredibly expensive and hard to enable"

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

#45

Post by bitJericho »

lutusp wrote: post #10
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.

> ... 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 Pu…

The cell phone could be programmed to do all this on a 911 call (well, short of stepping outside). I think that's actually a pretty reasonable idea.

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

#46

Post by jessriedel »

coryking wrote: post #30
jessriedel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a special emergency button. It wouldn't be hard for the phone to provide that info to emergency dispatchers whenever 911 was dialed at the same time as it was connection the call.

Lets say you just had a stroke or something. I honestly can't imagine how hard it would be to dial 911 on a modern touch screen phone if you are mentally or physically incapacitated. Seriously, it it kind of scares the crap out of me visualizing how I'd dial for an emergency if shit hit the fan and for whatever reason I wasn't my normal self.

The number of people every year who are so incapacitated that they can't dial 911 yet are just capacitated enough to find the red emergency button on their home screen (after entering their unlock password) can be approximated as zero. And if you have one of those "emergency call bypass" features for your lock screen...well, you're already done.

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

#47

Post by jmccree »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #39
afarrell wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I believe almost all phones in the US now supply GPS info for 911 calls. I remember flip phones 10 years ago having the option in settings to only enable location transmitting for emergency numbers. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRLP for an example and look up Wireless Enhanced 911 for more info.

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

#48

Post by modeless »

lutusp wrote: post #38
modeless wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 secto…

Awesome, thanks for the pointers! I've had difficulty finding information about this in the past. In particular, U-TDOA and TruePosition looks like exactly what I've been wanting.

http://www.trueposition.com/about-trueposition/resource-cent...

Accuracy of 50 meters is a bit disappointing, but hopefully the technology has room to improve. It's also disappointing that they're focused on the benefits for law enforcement and carriers rather than handset makers and end users.

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

#49

Post by lutusp »

modeless wrote: post #48
lutusp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 secto…

Awesome, thanks for the pointers! I've had difficulty finding information about this in the past. In particular, U-TDOA and TruePosition looks like exactly what I've been wanting. http://www.trueposition.com/about-trueposition/resource-cent... Accuracy of 50 meters is a bit disappointing, but hopefully the technology has room to improve. It's also disappointing that they're focused on the benefits for law enforcement…

> It's also disappointing that they're focused on the benefits for law enforcement and carriers rather than handset makers and end users.

That's just politics. The cell carriers know they need to get regulatory approval from government agencies before they begin to sell the technology to the public. That regulatory approval is more likely if they can show a governmental advantage, like pinning down the location of a drug dealer or a terrorist chatting on his cell phone.

The real advantage for the carriers, by the way, is they can make a planned tower switch for a moving phone more accurately if they have both position and velocity information. It's hard to get a velocity vector if you can't resolve a position to better than 3/4 mile, what you get with signal strength measurements and no time-of-flight. (The Doppler effect could provide velocity as well, but without a very good direction of motion.)

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

#50

Post by preetnation »

rdl wrote: post #35
monkmartinez wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

rdl, we're working on this right now, starting at college campuses and corporate campuses. We've got a yc interview this weekend, so your feedback is hugely helpful.

https://angel.co/bluelight-1

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