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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

#51

Post by monkmartinez »

preetnation wrote: post #50
rdl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you interfacing with the EMS side public safety directly? Ultimately, Government public safety agencies override corporate and industrial safety personnel from a NIMS, ICS point of view. You can have the best intentions of the world, but if the data isn't getting to the people who matter... the point is moot when seconds count. Most campuses and industrial complexes in my city rely on municipal Fire/EMS over municipal police. That is, they have their own security forces or police department and do not employ paramedics and fire fighters.

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

#52

Post by preetnation »

CEO of a company working on this problem.

Honestly I'm enthused to hear the initiative, critical thinking, and passion behind your ideas here. I personally agree with many of you that the first problem here IS NOT technology. It isn't that we don't have the technology, it is that the technology isn't being properly applied nor has been there been a willingness to adopt it. A big reason for this is that the people making the decisions of what to use and provide (telcos and CAD companies) are not the people who face the consequences when response arrives too slowly (regular people like you and me).

As monkmartinez said, this is a full-stack issue. Here's the full workflow assuming what is state-of-the-art in a 911 center.

You need help. Bring out your smartphone and press 'Emergency' if you have iOS. Tap '9' '1' '1' and dial.

Call rings once, maybe twice. Depending on the area, this could be a long time.

Call is routed to nearest PSAP

They pick up and say '9-1-1 emergency.'

You say something about what's going on.

Their first question, "Where are you located?"

Most often, you don't exactly know. so if you were in SF, "I'm in SOMA, near the ballpark."

They want more detail, cause they want to avoid what happened with monkmartinez below. "Sir, can you name cross-streets?"

Hopefully you know. "3rd and brannan". Now they have something they can use to dispatch responders.

If you don't know, they will keep asking for more specificity. At the same time, they are using their console (which looks like it was built in Fortran) to manually refresh to try and get your coordinates. This takes anywhere from 45 seconds to 6 minutes, the whole time you have to be on the call without hanging up.

Let's say they get the coordinates. The accuracy can be anywhere from 150 meters to 4000meters. Also, they come in as RAW coordinates (37.7756, -122.4193).

They then write these coordinates on paper, go to Google Maps on a separate console and type them in. THEN they have an address that they can dispatch responders to. It is insane.

There is so much room to improve this. 9-1-1 is a public service that people depend as part of the social fabric that enables our lives. It is crazy to me that this is such a problem, and I know that it is one that has to be fixed. We think that fixing this will definitively make the world a better place and enable many people to live better lives.

If you want to know more about our company and what we are working on: angel.co/bluelight-1 or email preet@getbluelight.com

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

#53

Post by rdl »

preetnation wrote: post #50
rdl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Awesome! Good luck! (Looks pretty good to me)

I wonder if it would be a good customer development/market research strategy to volunteer with some local departments (EMT-B certification is pretty easy; it's a fair amount of time to volunteer though). Might be a good place to hire, as well.

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

#55

Post by monkmartinez »

preetnation wrote: post #52

CEO of a company working on this problem. Honestly I'm enthused to hear the initiative, critical thinking, and passion behind your ideas here. I personally agree with many of you that the first problem here IS NOT technology. It isn't that we don't have the technology, it is that the technology isn't being properly applied nor has been there been a willingness to adopt it. A big reason for this is that the people mak…

The real problem is the diversity in hardware and software from one district or department to the next. I live and breathe this stuff everyday and have given it some serious consideration. I think that it is high time a 911 or emergency protocol was developed. A network level interface standard that would enable data sharing across the board. The other problem is $$$... there isn't much money to spend on this at the municipal level right now. I don't think it will be like this forever, but it is certainly a problem right now.

Edit: Another issue is the people making the purchasing decisions on the public safety side do NOT understand technology. The men and women who are Chiefs or Directors were not born into technology. They are "old school" firefighters/paramedics and with that mindset comes a lot of baggage. Most of them are downright scared of technology. This is rapidly changing as the demographics of the fire/ems service are in total flux. Baby boomers are retiring because the job is physically demanding and your body wears out. Newer guys/gals like myself (9 years) embrace tech and are active to find ways to leverage it.

I have lots of ideas that I am working on for Android and the fire/ems service, but are mostly related to education, reference, promotional exams and such Ie. one man projects. These big problems are complex beasts that would require me to quit driving a fire engine (sometimes, I can't believe I am actually paid to do that) while improving my programming ability full time to gain employment in the software industry... its a conundrum that I've wrestled with for some time.

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

#56

Post by astrange »

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…

Smartphones already have these features.

> Smartphones should have an emergency button.

There is an emergency call button on the iPhone lock screen, because you have to be able to place such calls even if it's not your phone, or it's not activated, or the SIM is not in, etc.

> Pressing the button should automatically call 911 (or 112)

Actually the same thing, since dialing the emergency number doesn't just call a number, but starts a GSM emergency call. That's why dialing 911 on an American phone works even if you've taken it with you to another country. (This doesn't quite work in countries with separate police/fire/ambulance numbers.)

Actually, if you tell Siri to "Call 911" I believe it just does it with no confirmation, unlike other numbers. Not sure what information is provided by cell phones on these calls, though.

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

#57

Post by preetnation »

monkmartinez wrote: post #55
preetnation wrote: post #52

CEO of a company working on this problem. Honestly I'm enthused to hear the initiative, critical thinking, and passion behind your ideas here. I personally agree with many of you that the first problem here IS NOT technology. It isn't that we don't have the technology, it is that the technology isn't being properly applied nor has been there been a willingness to adopt it. A big reason for this is that the people mak…

The real problem is the diversity in hardware and software from one district or department to the next. I live and breathe this stuff everyday and have given it some serious consideration. I think that it is high time a 911 or emergency protocol was developed. A network level interface standard that would enable data sharing across the board. The other problem is $$$... there isn't much money to spend on this at the…

Definitively agreed. I'd love to pick your brain and chat

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

#58

Post by wlesieutre »

taejo wrote: post #34
wlesieutre wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whatever positioning source it's using, my phone can place me within around 20 ft while it's in my closet. Not perfect, but about the same accuracy as anywhere else in my apartment.

But yeah, if you're in a city with huge buildings blocking GPS signals and 50 floors of little apartments stacked on top of each other, then a rough street address may not help enough anyway.

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

#59

Post by afarrell »

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…

Regardless of whether or not cell phones currently have the technical capability to upload GPS data, I assert that a Reasonable Person would not be surprised to learn that by calling 911, they were giving their location to the dispatcher.

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

#60

Post by jimktrains2 »

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…

e911: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1
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