Authoritative Data for Next Generation Emergency Services - June 29th, 2022

What is Authoritative Data?

Authoritative data is a repository or system which contains identifiable information that’s considered to be the primary or most reliable source for this information. Authoritative data comes from authoritative sources, is officially certified, and deemed trusted.

“Land surveyors were probably the first to use the term authoritative geospatial data and they have been producing authoritative data for some time. Surveyors define authoritative as data that contains a surveyor’s professional stamp and that the data can be used for engineering design, determination of property boundaries and permit applications. In essence, the term carries a certification of positional accuracy.” – ESRI

The Pan-Canadian Action Plan for GeoBase II and Collaborative Geospatial Architecture Working Group Final Report indicated:

“The term “authoritative” should be applied only to data that is legislated or regulated. Should it be necessary to differentiate data supplied by government agencies from other sources of data – it is suggested that discussion should be about “trusted” data; and validation must be part of the certification of authoritativeness.”

Authoritative data and the 9-1-1 Legacy System, ANI/ALI & MSAG

“To help you, they need to find you.”

Validating the location of a 9-1-1 caller, before the call is placed, began with Enhanced 9-1-1 (E9-1-1) where public safety agencies started collecting and maintaining address or location data into something called the ALI (automatic location information database) and MSAG (master street address guide).

The MSAG Directory contained all the addresses residing within a PSAPs jurisdiction, and was the responsibility of the state or municipal authority for update, maintenance, and distribution. Each address in the MSAG was assigned a 7-digit ESN (Emergency Service Number) to decide which police, fire and EMS agencies would respond to the 9-1-1 call within that specific geographical area. 

ANI, or Automatic Number Identification, as the name implies, is the landline telephone number calling 9-1-1 and displayed to the PSAP (Public Service Answering Point). This telephone number, plus the location information (address, incl. details like building name, suite, floor, or room number etc.) of that call, is stored in ALI database.

Network carriers ensured a customer’s civic address correlated to a correct entry in the MSAG. They sent that information to the 9-1-1 state authorities who looked after the ANI/ ALI. This data is then forwarded to “9-1-1 Net” to validate, ensuring an address provided by the Network carrier was in fact a real civic address. If validated it’s deemed authoritative…reliable and trusted.

Authoritative data and Next Generation 9-1-1; LVF, ECRF, LIS

Location is fundamental to the effective operation of the NG9-1-1 system.

For E9-1-1 the location accuracy of the 9-1-1 ALI data lay with a local 9-1-1 Database Administrator who maintained the MSAG records based upon the ALI service provider's standards. In NG9-1-1, GIS replaces MSAG in the form of a Location Validation Function (LVF) and Emergency Call Routing Function (ECRF).

GIS data layers

GIS is a system which creates, manages, analyzes, and charts all types of data to a map.

GIS technology is the authoritative data at the center of NG9-1-1 and is used to route 9-1-1 calls and dispatch responders. The ECRF dictates which PSAP to send the call to for service, and the LVF validates the street address for correct routing and resource dispatch.

To function correctly, authoritative GIS data, such as street centerlines, address points and call center boundaries MUST exist and have to be meticulously maintained so they remain accurate.

For NG9-1-1 the ALI database is also replaced by something called a LIS (Location Information Server) whose records need validation against the LVF, just as ALI did against the MSAG.

Responsibility wise, the LIS would be maintained (or contracted) by the Service Provider and the LVF/ECRF will be maintained by Public Safety. In addition to replacing the ALI database with the LIS, the accuracy of the GIS data now lies not only with the 9-1-1 database Administrator, but also with a GIS Administrator. 

Validating locations stored within a location database is vitally important. In both E9-1-1 and NG9-1-1, invalid locations associated with subscriber records negatively impact emergency response, making it time-consuming and sometimes impossible to dispatch first responders to specific call locations and for NG9-1-1, invalid locations may result in routing failures and complicate the formatting of call-taking displays.

So where does NG location data come from?

The same place it always has:

Cell tower ID and/or cell tower triangulation are traditional methods still used to locate mobile calls; however, they are often unreliable, offer large search areas, with low location accuracy in urban settings. Rural areas with few cell towers also suffer the limitations of cell tower capability. Cell Tower ID is reliable for call routing purposes but prone to error for areas located near 9-1-1 jurisdictional boundaries.

Handset-Derived Location (such as AML, ELS, HELO etc.) refers to mobile devices which can “locate themselves” if provided access reference/orientation points. Just as ships used to navigate by the stars, these smart devices use tools such as GPS (GNSS), Cell Tower and Wi-Fi for localization if the location points of GPS and Cell Towers are known. However, for indoor emergency calls, GPS and cell tower triangulation offer little-to-no visibility.

Wi-Fi is used for the urban and indoor component, but multipath Wi-Fi distortion and crowd-sourced data means this estimated information can be unverified, distorted, non-authoritative and “noisy”. Additionally when any handset is not ‘connected’, its Media Access Control (MAC) address can change (or be “randomized”) to comply with privacy policies, meaning the location data harvested isn’t that reliable.  So whilst NG9-1-1 requires validated location, the sources of location are not validated, and this is problematic for citizen privacy. The data has therefore not gone through an authoritative process. 

EML is a Tag-based location system which provides dispatchable address AND uses authoritative data reference points

Going beyond the current GPS, cell tower and crowd-sourced Wi-Fi location methods, Emergency Mobile Location (or EML) is a tag-based location methodology using the known physical placement of existing 802.11 Wi-Fi access points to provide accurate indoor location information.

How does it do this?

The IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi standard relies on access points to constantly publish information about themselves within a beacon management frame. These frames of data include enough information for a mobile device to understand which wireless networks are available and how to connect to them. The EML TAGs also sit in the beacon management frame, so when the mobile device (also referred to as a Wi-Fi client) scans the ecosystem during an emergency call, it picks up the contents of the beacon management frame and the TAG (with it’s unique identifying data attached) and subsequently provides dispatchable location.

How is this authoritative?

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) manage Wi-Fi access points and maintain an inventory of their own equipment including the address and placement of that equipment. By providing this information to Emergency Services, the unique values or TAGs broadcast by Wi-Fi access points can be validated and associated to the dispatchable address of that Wi-Fi access point via the MSAG or LVF.

All the location information about the access point is maintained by internet service providers and enterprise network administrators, in order to know where their equipment is installed. Mobile phones detect this equipment and communicate it to an EML server which provides a detailed, precise location (within the short range of the nearest access point).

In the EML world, additional to ANI/ ALI information for fixed voice services, Telcos or ISPs would provide the association of BSSID (MAC addresses) to a Civic Address to the 9-1-1 database. As with the original MSAG database this data can be sent to 9-1-1 Net where addresses are authenticated and verified…creating an authoritative DB for Next Generation 9-1-1!

A simplification of the process would look something like this:

  1. Mobile/SIP Client initiates 911/112 voice call. Call is routed to Emergency Service Routing Proxy (ESRP).

  2. Mobile/SIP Client initiates data session with EML Service.

  3. Algorithms are run to determine the detailed dispatchable address.

    1. Note EML Server can be inside or outside of ESInet

  4. EML Server delivers detailed location payload to LIS

  5. ESRP retrieves location from LIS. Now ESRP knows the location of the originating call.

  6. ESRP now asks ECRF (Emergency Call Routing Function) “What is the destination of my call?” Where to send the call is located in ECRF.

  7. Call is then routed to appropriate PSAP.

EML provides dispatchable address for all NG mobile 9-1-1 calling using the authoritative database of internet access points as its reference. This creates a nationwide network of verified location datapoints that enable dispatchable address plus the indoor component for mobile and many other communications services, such as those for Persons with Disabilities, VoIP, VoIP Apps, social media, IoT and AI. EML also provides a location element with the call, (or any IP communications packets) enabling more efficient NG 9-1-1 call routing.

Sources:

https://resources.esri.ca/news-and-updates/public-safety-has-always-been-geocentric-even-if-you-didn-t-know-it

https://resources.esri.ca/videos/new-brunswick-blazes-trail-on-getting-its-data-ready-for-ng9-1-1?platform=hootsuite

https://cams-lacounty.hub.arcgis.com/pages/ng9-1-1

https://resources.esri.ca/news-and-updates/what-does-the-term-authoritative-data-really-mean

https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.nena.org/resource/resmgr/standards/nena-inf-027.1-2018_lvfconsi.pdf

Is Next Generation Emergency location all over the map? - June 22nd, 2022

What is Next Generation 9-1-1/ 112?

Significant technological advancements over the last few decades, and transitions towards ever more mobile, networked societies, means our system needs to keep pace; over 80% of emergency calls are from a mobile device and a growing number also from IP services.

Yet most emergency calling centers still use analog rather than digital technologies, and will require significant upgrades to become a digital Internet Protocol 9-1-1/112 system, aka Next Generation 9-1-1/ 112 (NG9-1-1 or NG112) service.

Next Generation emergency calling will require:

·         the ability to send and receive data in real time,

·         receive calls from non-traditional sources,

·         share data between centers and other agencies,

·         and route calls and resources using real-time location information.

This “Next Generation” emergency calling system will enable the public to make voice, video, or text calls via ANY communications device over an IP-based network, with calling centres receiving rich data plus additions such as motor vehicle collision or medical alert/bracelet notifications.

The planned NG9-1-1/ 112 framework will rely on an Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet) using a delivery method referred to as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).  SIP is a common protocol used in Voice over Internet (VoIP) technology, which works alongside other application layer protocols, to control multimedia communications over the Internet.

VoIP technology has the capability to deliver voice, video and picture content over the Internet and is regarded as one of the most cost-efficient ways to communicate anytime, and anywhere. All VoIP needs is a computer/laptop/mobile with internet connectivity, and with over 90% of US citizens using, or having access to, the internet regularly, it’s a reliable technology framework to use. 

The transition to Next Gen

Next Gen 9-1-1/ 112 hopes to enhance and improve an essential service, creating an information rich Public Safety ecosystem, that’s efficient, cohesive, resilient, and future-conscious…allowing data to flow seamlessly from Public to Responder Network. Disabled and special needs citizens in particular will benefit from this upgrade, enabling communications between 9-1-1/112 and their cell phone without the need for additional teletype devices.

Challenges of Next Generation

Countries, states, and provinces have cited reservations around Next Gen implementation, in terms of technology, funding, security, policy and governance:

  • With more complex data, telecommunication carriers will need further education and training,

  • and the older legacy systems will need ongoing maintenance whilst working on new ones, using a hybrid approach.

  • An IP-based system could also pose cyber security risks with possible new vectors for attack that could disrupt or disable PSAP operations.

  • Telecommunications is also a highly regulated industry, so the upgrade will require adjustments to laws, and adherence to regulations, and policies.

Where does Next Gen get location data from?

Location of a mobile device is the industry challenge today, so does this communication rich upgrade fix that? Does NG 9-1-1 now have the Dispatchable Address? “The street address of the caller, and additional information, such as room or floor number”.

No.

The diagram below is a representation of what an NG service will look like. But an area of real interest is the LIS (Location Information Server) and the LVF (Location Validation Function) sitting within the ESInet.

I3 standard courtesy of NENA

“LIS” means Location Information Server, and refers to a repository of mappings such as IP addresses or geographic location values.

“LVF” is a functional element where civic location information is validated against authoritative GIS database information. A civic address is considered “valid” or adequate if found in that database.

The information behind how location is “validated” is complex. And more information can be found on that here: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.nena.org/resource/resmgr/standards/nena-inf-027.1-2018_lvfconsi.pdf

Yet one thing seems very clear, the above document states that:

“NG9-1-1 relies on location”

But the accuracy of that location information is indistinguishable from the location accuracy currently provided through E9-1-1 for wireless, using GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell tower triangulation…. or z-axis.

NG 9-1-1 and for 112 appears to be bringing with it the current challenges around indoor location. Why? Since one of these technologies or methods offers dispatchable location. As previously clarified handset -derived location and supplemental data only offer location on a “best-effort” basis and provide only an estimated location with a search area, not DISPATCHABLE ADDRESS:

Q. Does EED provide a civic or “dispatchable” address?

A.      No. EED provides a high-accuracy, high-integrity geodetic or “latitude /longitude / uncertainty” location estimate. All practical location estimation technologies, including HELO, estimate user location by measuring noisy real-world signals. Estimates based on such measurements are limited in their accuracy and precision.” ~ Apple Inc.

So no door to knock on for Next Gen just yet.

Where does that leave our Next Generation Service?

Location is the foundation of the system. Without it, an emergency call, where the caller cannot communicate or verify a location, means time and lives will still be lost. But it’s already clear reservations around implementing the service aren’t just whether the technology works, but whether it’s cost efficient, interoperable, scalable, and adheres to regulations and policies. Next Gen also needs to ensure location information comes from an authoritative, validated data source before or during the call, ensuring correct routing and dispatch (more on that in next week’s article).

Additionally, NG relies on the localization element be received with or before the call; enabling the ECRF (Emergency Call Routing Function) and ESRP (Emergency Services Routing Proxy) to effectively route the call to the correct PSAP, aka “route before call”. Methods such as handset-derived location are unable to provide a location in the timeframes required for this service.

 What’s the solution?

For the Next Generation system to be truly successful, the location element needs to support it. Ignoring this part of the technology, whilst undergoing the NG upgrade, means the same problems haunting our system today, will continue to do so tomorrow. More data does not mean better data. Dispatchers will still be left pondering or deciphering what the caller’s location is, whether they receive a text message or a grainy video call. And that’s time wasted.

Any upgrade needs to be seamless and efficient, using existing infrastructures that will evolve as the technology does. The information needs to be useable, immediate, and actionable, with privacy and security of location data being fundamental.

Tag-based location is exactly that, a “bolt-on” technology which utilizes the current wi-fi ecosystem and integrates with the existing PSAP environments. It doesn’t require additional training or hardware, it symbiotically aligns with the IP network so when the mobile emergency call is placed, the location arrives at the PSAP at the time the call is answered, providing accurate indoor and vertical location. Simple.

Building a Next Gen Emergency Service for our Next Gen - June 15th, 2022

Next Generation 9-1-1 and 112 plan to revolutionize the way telecommunicators communicate with first responders and the general public during an emergency. But the Next Gen Public Safety industry isn’t simply about improving technology to provide greater situational awareness and more efficient sharing of information, it’s about protecting of our future generations too. It’s Next Gen, for our Next Gen, and here’s why.

Safer, more resilient communities

Over a decade ago I joined a Fire Dept as paid-on-call. It was a job I hadn’t previously considered since I was teaching the Fire Recruits Phys.Ed at the time. But the Training Officer suggested I give it some serious thought…he explained it was a way to support and protect our community, help people in need, challenge myself by learning new skills, not to mention the camaraderie and extended family I’d become part of. All were significant and very valid reasons for joining, but the biggest motivational factors were my children, who were babies at the time. Contributing to my community meant I was also helping them, building a safer and more supported community, and on a larger scale, that’s exactly the goal for NG9-1-1 and NG112.

Meeting technology expectations

Children today are the adults of tomorrow, and rightly or wrongly, digital devices such as smart phones, tablets, laptops, and home assistants are their daily normal. It’s how many teens communicate with each other, and they will naturally expect any emergency service to meet this technological expectation.

Brian Fontes, CEO of National Emergency Number Association also said:

"Consumers expect to be able to communicate with 9-1-1 in much the same way as they communicate with each other through their smartphones.”

Our kids also watch the Hollywood movies which love to perpetuate the idea of high-tech capabilities, such as Emergency Responders knowing exactly where you are…. E.g. has anyone watched The Call? So it’s imperative the 9-1-1 architecture in real life keeps pace.

Device ownership in children is increasing

As of 2019 it’s estimated that just over half of children in the United States, 53%, now own a smartphone by the age of 11. And 84% of teenagers have their own phone. This statistic is only going to increase as technology becomes more widespread and society becomes ever more mobile. World-wide mobile ownership is set to hit 7 billion (https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world) in the next couple of years, until eventually almost everyone will communicate through a mobile device! We need to ensure our emergency number networks can support this demand and expectation.

Protecting vulnerable callers

Many emergency services are still only reachable through a voice call, and younger children, because of their age, may not be able to express themselves as well as an adult, meaning the call might take longer as a consequence. Young callers may not know their own address or phone number, so it’s critical dispatchers, alongside providing guidance and reassurance, are able to discern this information quickly, with the data being provided as the call is answered.

With general increases in calls to 9-1-1, and more commonplace incidences of parental overdoses and domestic violence, more children will continue to call 9-1-1 and it’s crucial the system works for them.

In the following video a 4-year-old boy called 9-1-1 as his mom lay unconscious on the floor. Whilst the outcome was a good one, it took Dispatch 15 minutes to locate the caller. 15 minutes is a long time…too long:

Children and technology are becoming more intertwined, and with so many layers of data being exchanged, it’s imperative the 9-1-1 call process, for both child and 9-1-1 dispatcher/operator, is as efficient and error free as possible.

As always “For a Responder to help you, they first have to find you.” And since many State and Provincial 9-1-1 websites still emphasize children need to know their name, parent’s name, telephone number, and most importantly their own address, we still have work to do.

Next Gen 9-1-1/ 112 plans to enhance and improve an essential service, creating an information rich Public Safety ecosystem, but there’s an assumption NG9-1-1 location is better than E9-1-1, and as we’ve discussed previously this isn’t the case, and we are not yet doing a proper job for the citizens of tomorrow.

 

The Heroes in Headsets - June 8th, 2022

Emergency dispatchers, 9-1-1 call takers, operators, emergency telecommunicators…they are the force which connects responders to the emergency caller. A vital link in emergency response, coordinating communications between the caller and police officers, firefighters, and paramedics ensuring safe, swift, and appropriate responses.

Emergency medical dispatch has evolved over the last 50 years from a system initially designed to limit abuse of the emergency medical services (EMS) to an integral part of EMS response. Its goal?

“To send the right thing, to the right person, at the right time, in the right way, and to say the right thing until help arrives.”

But when did it all start?

 

Wurst Wagon, circa 1799

Specialized care and transportation of the acutely ill and injured goes back at least as far as the Napoleonic war, starting with Pierre François Percy and Dominique-Jean Larrey.

Percy the son of a surgeon, entered the medical service in 1776. During the French Revolution, in 1792, he became a consultant surgeon to the Army of the North where he invented the "wurst" wagon, a padded wagon designed to transport medical staff and supplies to the front for immediate wound treatment. Almost simultaneously, Larrey started creating an ambulance service to transport wounded soldiers away from the battlefield. Percy’s invention never achieved the widespread success of Larrey's ambulance, but both inventions signified the beginning of something revolutionary (no pun intended) …the beginning of the EMS service we know, love, and appreciate today.

The Emergency dispatcher-type role we are familiar with began only as recently as the 1970’s in the US. A paramedic named Bill Tune from Phoenix, Arizona, was conveniently present at a 9-1-1 dispatch center, and provided unplanned and unscripted pre-arrival instructions to a mother calling for her nonbreathing baby. The child survived, and the then Fire Chief, instructed the center to begin routinely offering these prearrival instructions. The program was referred to as “medical self help”.

By 1976, a doctoral thesis on “paramedic unit placement” started raising questions concerning EMS abuse and the role of dispatch in preventing it. In 1977, Dr Jeff Clawson, now regarded as the pioneer behind Emergency Medical Dispatch began to develop protocols for dispatchers. The protocols were known as “Medical Priority Dispatching” and were introduced into Salt Lake City’s Fire Department in 1978. There were 3 essential components to Clawson's protocols:

  • Interrogation questions, aka “key questions”

  • Telephone help, aka “prearrival instructions”

  • Response determinants aka “level of response”, incl type of warning lights and/or sirens used.

These instructions eventually transitioned into the MPDS “Medical Priority Dispatching System” the industry uses today.

Personal Skills and Challenges

Highly trained and professional, emergency call takers are communications specialists and the ultimate multi-taskers…with their desks bearing a striking resemblance to NASA’s mission control with solid language skills and honed interview techniques they need to acquire the right information from each emergency call. Master tacticians with sound technological and directional knowledge they also require a variety of soft skills to perform their jobs effectively. It’s important they’re great listeners, have clear judgement, are well-organized, compassionate and patient.

This job is challenging, with long hours (sometimes 24-hour shifts). It’s highly stressful handling phone calls from people who are having, in many cases, the worst day of their life, and it’s not uncommon for them to bear the brunt of verbal abuse, or to suffer PTSD as a consequence of dealing with adrenaline-pumped and tragic calls day in and day out. Emotional control, a calm demeanour and the ability the “move on” once a call has ended are crucial skills, but the job can chip away at mental health over time, and sadly these telecommunicators are just as likely to suffer from mental health challenges as any other First Responder:

"You kind of try to put it away just to kind of protect yourself because the next call is going to happen," she said. "It can really play on your mind. You get through your shift, and you get home, and it doesn't go away. It's still there. Depending on how traumatic the call was, and how you absorbed it, could play on your mind for months and years … as an operational-stress injury where it becomes a post-traumatic event." – CBC News

Fighting for Industry Recognition and staffing shortages

The definition of a first responder is “someone designated or trained to respond to an emergency, yet a disagreement centred around whether 9-1-1 telecommunicators are indeed “first responders” is still ongoing, despite APCO recommending the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) be revised as far back as 2014.

Reclassification of the SOC would see a dispatcher’s status go from “Administrative Support” (same as telephone operator or office admin), to “Protective” (such as a firefighter). Unfortunately, such recognition hasn’t been given…yet. As of April 2021, the "Supporting Accurate Views of Emergency Services Act" (911 SAVES Act) was introduced to the US Senate accompanying rationale that telecommunicators are essentially the “first of the first responders”. All eyes are watching whether this will be passed, since a similar bill was attempted in 2019 and failed…

This is not only sad, but unjust. Office administrators don’t help save lives on a daily basis. And what’s even more disconcerting is staffing shortages at emergency communication centers (ECC’s) are directly linked to this failure, making it impossible for any justifications to, wage improvement, work environment or training. Consequentially, those considering a career in an ECC often view the role as low wage, with zero upward career mobility. It’s also predicted that due to upcoming retirements there will be over 10,000 jobs to fill in the not-to-distant future, and not enough people willing to fill them.

The Technology

Dispatchers, call takers, and operators use a system called Computer-aided dispatch (CAD) to prioritize and record incident calls, identify the location and status of responders out in the field, and effectually dispatch emergency resources and personnel. Responders can also receive messages from the same CAD system via their own mobile data terminals (MDTs), radios, and even cell phones.

Simplified CAD system

CAD systems are capable of interfacing with GIS (geographic information system), automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems, caller identification (ID) systems and various other databases. Plus unified CADs (UCAD) interface with multiple agencies and/or computer systems serving law enforcement, fire, and EMS.

But it’s not all as technology forward as you would think or hope. Many emergency call centers across the US and Canada and Europe, due to underfunding, are still working with end-of-life legacy systems and are no where near ready to upgrade to a Next Generation System any time soon.

How the right tools can help

The first question you’re asked from a 9-1-1 call taker is:

“WHERE IS YOUR EMERGENCY”

Yet contrary to public perception 9-1-1 doesn’t automatically know where you are in many cases, especially for indoor calls and multi-level dwellings like apartment blocks. If they can’t find you they can’t help you, and trying to decipher a caller’s location due to uncertainty or inability to verbalize means time gets wasted…and time isn’t in abundance when you’re having a heart attack.

E9-1-1 and NG9-1-1 use the same location methodologies to try an pinpoint a call: GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell tower/triangulation plus supplemental data provided on a “best-effort” basis. Estimated search areas for mobile location slow down call routing and a Dispatcher’s ability to handle and dispatch help, this leads to substantially more stress for everyone involved and in over 10,000 US cases each year, death of the caller.

Provisioning Dispatchable Address, “The street address of the caller, and additional information, such as room or floor number” would alleviate some of stress which impacts call takers each day, it’s fair to say it would streamline the MPDS, offering faster arrivals to emergency scenes, and could help save thousands of lives each year. But don’t just take our word for it. In 2020 ELi Technology, alongside IBM, had the privilege of hosting a Design Thinking workshop with a leading112 Operator in Europe.

In essence, the workshop analyzed what “value” accurate localization brings to the delivery chain of an emergency call: beginning with the caller and ending in the first responder, with dispatchers obviously being front and center.  

The overriding and collective consensus was that providing dispatchable address, would mean:

  •       reductions in call handling times of 30-90 seconds per call,

  •       efficient utilization of resources,

  •       stress reduction for callers and call takers,

  •       leading to more lives saved and a dramatically more efficient ESN system.

Sounds like something we should be thinking more about…

“Risking their lives to help others". - June 1st, 2022

“Risking their lives to help others". - June 1st, 2022

People don’t become a first responder for fame or fortune, they do so because they want to help…and they sacrifice a lot doing it. First Responders are driven, resilient, compassionate, professional, team players. The department is their extended family. They eat together, work together, train together, laugh together, sometimes cry together. It’s a job that’s stressful, exhilarating, tragic, rewarding, and unpredictable…never knowing what type of call is coming or when the pager or tones will go off.

Universal Access for ALL - May 25th, 2022

The most common way of reaching 9-1-1 is by picking up a phone and speaking with an operator. But have you ever wondered how YOU would communicate, citing your location and other emergency details, if you couldn’t speak, hear, were blind or had a cognitive disability?

Navigating our world with special needs is challenging at the best of times. Societies can struggle to provide basic access to amenities for those with cognition and physical challenges, and the emergency services is no exception. Yet “accessibility for all” is not only a matter of political, but also of moral importance.

There are approximately 1 billion people globally with a disability, with 135 million living in Europe, and in the US 48 million people are deaf or hard of hearing, and 7.5 million people have speech disabilities. Furthermore, as people age, they are more likely to suffer hearing loss or cognitive impairments with a result that such challenges are borne disproportionately by our older generations too.

Yet many emergency services are only reachable through a standard voice call, meaning a staggering proportion of the population are being marginalized and discriminated against. Many current emergency communication options are inefficient, outdated, or underutilized, leaving disabled callers vulnerable.

Calling 9-1-1 is stressful. Many layers of information are exchanged to ensure help is dispatched correctly. It’s therefore imperative the process is efficient and as error free as possible, whether you have a disability, or not.

“For a First Responder to help you, they first have to find you.”

Location of the emergency is the most important piece of information needed by the operator, but if the person calling/texting is already facing an uphill battle with simply “communicating” then that’s not only even more frustrating, but can lead to poorer outcomes.

Text to 9-1-1 for users with disabilities

In the US, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does require wireless carriers to deliver emergency texts only to call centers which make a request for them. Meaning providers are obliged to deliver a Text to 9-1-1 (T9-1-1) service to that center within a 6-month time period. T9-1-1 does enable deaf, deafened, hard of hearing, or speech-impaired persons to communicate with an operator in the event of an emergency, but in order to use T9-1-1, users require a compatible cellphone and need to be registered with their phone number to the wireless service provider. T9-1-1 also only exists in approximately 10% of the US, although it is more widespread in Canada.

Examples of tele-typing machines

Alternatives to T9-1-1 are using a teletype or teletypewriter (TTY) or a relay service.

Relay-operator services use 3rd party interpreters and take several minutes of communication exchange. The service involves sending an emergency text message first to a communications assistant (CA), who then calls the PSAP. The CA serves as a “relay” in the conversation between the emergency texter and the PSAP, voicing all typed text from the person with the disability, and sending PSAP replies to the caller. The process if far from simple and is open to delays and translation errors.

Teletypewriters are typically small, flat keyboards (laptop size) with a telephone perched above a keyboard. Use of these devices has dropped since texting became more popular, they are also a little cumbersome and take time to use.

Providing location during wireless calls/texts

But whether it’s providing text or video services, easy-to-understand alerts, pictograms, alert buttons, or apps, clear communication and obtaining an accurate location of the call will save lives.

  • Imagine you texted 9-1-1 for help and you didn’t have to relay your exact location…because they already had it? That’s going to save some time.

  • Imagine you are a blind 9-1-1 caller and can’t describe your current whereabouts, but they already had your hotel room and floor level?

  • Imagine the caller was an autistic child and couldn’t describe the emergency, but the dispatcher already knew where they were?

Accurate, automatic, reliable location data, in all forms of communication, is essential. Without it help will not arrive quickly or at all. Additionally, precise location data is required for routing and dispatch in a Next Generation environment; where location must be available at the same time as the call. Transitioning to a 9-1-1- service which accepts text, video and VoiP etc. needs to have the dispatchable location information layer already built in, but currently there’s no dispatchable address being provided for any wireless calls.

We have a long way to go

For T9-1-1 the FCC still urges users of wireless phones or other type of mobile device to still make a voice call, if possible. And they say, “if you are deaf, hard of hearing or speech disabled, and T9-1-1 is not available, use a TTY or a telecommunications relay service, if possible.”.

Source: https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/what-you-need-know-about-text-911#:~:text=If%20you%20attempt%20to%20send,voice%20call%20or%20using%20telecommunications

In Canada, whilst more widespread, regulators say:

“T9-1-1 is considered a “best efforts” service due to the technology constraints associated with text messaging. As with any text messaging services, there is no guarantee a text message will be sent, delivered, or received in a timely manner. In the unlikely event that this happens, the user will need to re-send the message.

Providing location information and the nature of the emergency in the first message is imperative. The 9-1-1 call taker may receive an approximate location of your cell phone with your 9-1-1 call; however, it is important for the caller to confirm the exact location of the emergency.”

Source: https://www.textwith911.ca/en/what-you-need-to-know-about-text-with-9-1-1/

There is clearly a lot more work that needs to be done. 9-1-1 is a critical life-saving program which should be directly, immediately, and equally accessible to ALL. Location of an emergency caller is still our industry’s biggest challenge, and even more evident in emergency call cases of persons with disabilities. Providing a dispatchable address would enable that universal access.

You want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple for change ~ Tim Cook 11th May, 2022

Handset-derived location for US and EU Emergency Services

Over 70% of emergency calls in the EU come from a mobile device, in the US it’s approximately 80%,. With telecommunications and the digital landscape evolving so quickly our Emergency Services are trying to do the same, but it’s important to acknowledge they are not succeeding as well as is needed.

Issues providing reliable and accurate mobile caller location, and also correctly routing the call to the correct PSAP, remain top of most Emergency Number Networks wish lists, and literally tens of thousands of lives around the globe would be saved if these 2 issues were resolved:

[“The FCC looked at how many 9-1-1 calls for ambulances resulted in deaths that could have been prevented by a one-minute reduction in response time…the FCC estimated more than 10,000 lives a year could be saved by improving 9-1-1 location accuracy.”]

[“A study by the Alliance for Telecommunication Industry Solutions estimated that an average of 12% of wireless calls are misrouted nationwide.... This equation estimates that more than 16,000 lives could be saved by eliminating misroutes altogether…”]

How is mobile location currently determined?

In Europe, North America, and most other countries globally, irrespective of your telecommunications/ISP network, handset/smart watch, APP or OS, ALL mobile caller location is determined using a version of “Handset Derived Location” utilizing standard location methods and supplemental ones, with combinations thereof.

When a caller dials Emergency Services, the phone, irrespective of being wireless or a landline, doesn’t automatically know where it is or automatically provide its location to the call taker. Instead, once 112/9-1-1 is dialed background technology takes over to search for the location quickly. For mobile, that source of location data comes from the telecommunications network, using cell tower triangulation. Additional to this information, the handset also collects GPS/GNSS data, and any close-by Wi-Fi access point data for an indoor location component. This “gathered and merged” location detail provides the “estimated location with a search area” of the handset. It’s irrelevant which provider is collecting the data, whether it’s an app, Operating System, or protocol, they’re effectively all drawing from the same location data well.

Location accuracy of these emergency calls varies widely and is always on the horizontal plane (ground-level) best quoted as a location estimate with a search area. 

For rural settings GPS and cell-tower triangulation provide relatively accurate latitudinal and longitudinal handset location, but are significantly less accurate in dense city landscapes where buildings stand close together. For indoor emergency calls, GPS and cell tower triangulation offer little-to-no visibility.

Wi-Fi is typically used for the urban and indoor component, but multipath Wi-Fi distortion (fig1) and crowd-sourcing of vast amounts of data means this information can be unverified, distorted, non-authoritative and “noisy”. Additionally when any handset is not ‘connected’, its Media Access Control (MAC) address can change (or be “randomized”) to comply with privacy policies, meaning the location data harvested isn’t that reliable.

Fig 1. Wi-Fi distortion representation

Wi-Fi also still provides zero vertical reference to the call. So, if you’re in a multi-storey building on the 15 floor you’re represented as being on the ground floor. You may think this makes little difference, but when seconds and minutes count, Responders searching a building for a victim can lead to tragic outcomes. News outlets back in 2020 covered a story in New York where the unthinkable happened:

Fig 2. Feb 2020. Troy, New York, 45 min search. The 9-1-1 system provided only a general location. Five officers and 3 firefighters searched each floor but could not locate his apartment.

[“Emergency dispatch systems still struggle to deliver the precise location of cellphone users a quarter-century after the devices became commonplace. The system was only able to provide a general location on Sixth Avenue, which included two five-story apartment buildings”] - Daily Mail, Feb 2020

Then there’s “Reverse Geocoding” which converts geographical location coordinates (i.e., GPS latitude, longitude) to a human-readable address or place name. This component of mobile location-based services aims to make location more easily understood, but it’s not necessarily any more accurate than other location methodologies.

Since handset location is in itself prone to levels of “error” the subsequent reverse geocode of that data is also prone. And once that geocode has been converted into a potential street address it further requires validation or verification, delivered in real-time at the same time as the emergency call.

Additional to the main location technologies, handsets and networks can also use phone sensor data, such as barometric pressure readings, or device language, to add more information to the emergency call. But there are inconsistencies in barometric data and the z-axis being supplied is being relayed in an unusable format to be helpful for Responders (and it’s still not considered dispatchable) .

Overall, supplemental location data provided by Big Data is offered on a “best-effort” basis and free of charge to 9-1-1. But it’s important to distinguish that whilst this information is important to assist emergency calls, companies such as Apple Inc (HELO and EED location) clearly state they provide and estimated location with a search area and do not provide what our industry refers to as DISPATCHABLE ADDRESS:

“Q. Does EED provide a civic or “dispatchable” address?

A. No. EED provides a high-accuracy, high-integrity geodetic or “latitude /longitude / uncertainty” location estimate. All practical location estimation technologies, including HELO, estimate user location by measuring noisy real-world signals. Estimates based on such measurements are limited in their accuracy and precision.”

You can appreciate there is a lot of information being shared during these emergency calls, but ultimately, it’s the quality of that data, not the quantity which matters, offering in many cases no dispatchable address…the industry gold standard.

The FCC in the US adapted the Ray Baum Act for improved location to mobile calls, allowing carriers to provide z-axis OR dispatchable information for an emergency mobile call. This caused some concern:

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel dissented in part, noting that the height-above-ellipsoid (HAE) format that the carriers must use to deliver vertical-location information is not useful to public safety.

“There is not one 911 call center today that can take the raw numbers in height above ellipsoid and translate them into actionable dispatchable-location information,” Rosenworcel said during a press conference following the FCC open meeting. “If we acted in this room today like the job is done, then we lied to you. And I’m afraid our decision was dishonest about whether the information is actionable.

“The fact so many 911 operators wrote into the agency and wrote to my office, telling me they were distressed that we would organize around information they could not use, I think is a testament to the fact that … we have a lot more work to do.”

Obtaining a Dispatchable location is perceived as being complicated, requiring collaboration across an industry, with concerns around interoperability, privacy, and cybersecurity, and it’s true, it does look complicated, but is it really? And does that mean we should just give up?

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”– Albert Einstein

 

Location intelligence for private/corporate enterprises – 4th May

The priority for any emergency plan is to protect people, but when a workplace or campus contains thousands, or even tens of thousands of individuals, spread across expansive complex areas and multi-storey buildings; effectively locating, communicating, and coordinating assistance is both fundamental and challenging. If a first responder arrives at a campus armed only with the main street address it’s unlikely they’ll find an emergency caller quickly if they’re located in a 6th floor meeting room.

Also, should an organization suffer from a larger-scale shelter in place, lockdown or evacuation situation, Responders then need to locate, in real-time, many citizens simultaneously, spread across large spaces. These events consist of people who are disoriented and panicked, or even worse unable to speak or injured. If they can’t provide you with an exact location, coordinating help can turn to chaos or be severely delayed.

During workplace emergency events like these, seconds make the difference between extra paperwork and risk to life and limb. Employees could be in imminent danger; there could be disruption to operations, property damage and environmental threats.

Emergency preparation is the foundation to ANY health and safety program, and is a legal requirement in many countries today.

 

The RAY BAUM’s Act in the US, Section 506, refers to the Federal Communication Commission rules requiring enterprises using multi-line telephone systems (MLTS) to provide an automated dispatchable location for all 9-1-1 calls. Dispatchable location data provided to the PSAP (public safety answering point) includes a valid civic address, plus additional information such as building, floor, suite, or room number. Any information that is deemed as “necessary” to adequately identify the location of the calling party.” Dispatchable location information is required for both fixed, static, and non-fixed, dynamic, phones/devices.

In the EU, the ECC (Electronic Communications Committee) published a report in 2019 outlining the concern around certain aspects of emergency calls originating from private/corporate networks. They reference Article 109 of the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) stating that private/corporate networks should:

“Promote the access to emergency services through the single European emergency number ‘112’ from electronic communication networks” which are not publicly available”. *

The Report concluded there is an issue with caller location information from private/corporate networks and since such networks are typically places of employment, the “safety and wellbeing of employees is paramount”.

Private Networks are secure, private virtual spaces, isolated from the internet. They use private IP addresses and possess extensive, well-maintained indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi ecosystems, which employees and visitors are almost always connected to. They are the perfect habitat to leverage and benefit from a Wi-Fi-based service, but Private Network decision makers need a technology which provides reliable location information quickly, so they may act accordingly.

EML (Emergency Mobile Location) is a location-based service (LBS) which leverages a private network’s unique design and existing Wi-Fi environment, providing essential location data and support. Unlike all other Location Based Services, EML provides outdoor location, and more importantly a dispatchable address, with accurate indoor location, precise floor, and specific room number, without the purchase of additional expensive hardware.

EML provides overwhelming benefits to your organization

  • Individual location data and panic button support

  • Event management and resilience

  • Interoperability with current handset/ emergency app

  • Security Personnel location tracing

  • Asset management/ tracking

  • Privacy compliance

  • Next Generation, Smart City, IoT support

Affordable and accurate location data with EML will save your organization valuable time during an emergency response and fully support all your daily operations requiring location sharing.

EML can assist in locating and connecting your employees, and visitors during any emergency event, providing detailed life-saving location data to school administrators, faculty, security personnel and first responders. This level of communication allows for actionable incident assessment, intelligence, and management, with dramatically improved event remediation. EML is the right tool for your Security and Administrative personnel and First Responders.

 

Source:

*Provision of Caller Location Information from Private/Corporate Networks approved 22 May 2019, EEC

“Every day, first responders put their own lives on the line to ensure our safety. The least we can do is make sure they have the tools to protect and serve their communities”. - 27th April, 2022

- Joe Lieberman, United States senator 1989- 2013. Former nominee for Vice President of the United States in 2000.

According to CIPSRT (Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment) First Responders are:

“A person with specialized training who is among the first to arrive and provide assistance at the scene of an emergency... Historically, first responders have traditionally included paramedics, [emergency dispatchers] and medical technicians, police officers, firefighters, and rescuers.”

People don’t become a first responder for fame or fortune, they do so because they want to help…and they sacrifice a lot doing it. First Responders are driven, resilient, compassionate, professional, team players. The department is their extended family. They eat together, work together, train together, laugh together, sometimes cry together. It’s a job that’s stressful, exhilarating, tragic, rewarding, and unpredictable…never knowing what type of call is coming or when the pager or tones will go off.

But sadly the average career span of an EMT or paramedic is estimated at only 5 years, due mostly to burnout, mental stress, and the job’s physical toll. And according to the CDC, whilst the national average for suicide contemplation is about 3.7%, a 2015 survey of emergency personnel found their rate to be 37%.

Emergency Dispatch jobs are also incredibly intense and stressful. In the face of life’s most challenging circumstances, and with a calm voice, dispatchers triage emergency calls, decipher unclear information, offer life-saving instructions over the phone and dispatch responders to those having the worst day of their life. Those who quit dispatcher training cite being unable to handle the “rapid pace of the job and the responsibility of having someone’s lives in their hands.” Hours are long, overtime is mandatory. Dispatchers, like EMT, are needed 24/7, 365 days of the year. And dispatchers don’t generally find out the outcome of their calls. With no closure, they continue to pickup the phone and move to the next call.

Recently, Rave Mobile Safety issued a survey report on some of the increasing and diverse challenges Responders are now faced with. In a press release they stated that:

“Findings show respondents are experiencing increased challenges and workloads at their jobs and need better tools and resources to improve response efforts…. Without the necessary tools, resources and funding, responders will continue to face challenges with data sharing and real-time collaboration during an emergency.”

The report goes on to explain that improving resources, such as additional staffing and budget increases came top the list, followed by improving technology to enable more effective responses.

Better technology, Accurate location, Faster response

Shortening emergency response times by improving location accuracy of the 9-1-1 call has been a huge focal point for Emergency Services for several decades, it’s nothing new. The shift in dialing 9-1-1 from a landline to mobile device presents specific technology challenges around routing calls and locating callers. Having reliable and actionable location intelligence is still crucial:

With the gross majority of 9-1-1 calls now originating from a cellphone it is more important than ever to understand that, unlike a traditional landline which provides 9-1-1 call takers with your exact address, current cellphone and internet phone technology will not pinpoint your exact location. This is why it is so important when you call us to know what city you are in, the building addresses, cross streets, major landmarks, and any other information that will help us send first responders to you.”

Source: https://www.ecomm911.ca/community/9-1-1-education/campaigns/know-your-location/

Technology is a valuable resource that’s under utilized within Public Safety and emergency response. Surely it’s our responsibility to ensure one of toughest jobs is supported with the best technology tools.

Improving location information and providing a “door to knock on”, will alleviate, in part, some of the immense burden and stress Responders, Dispatchers, and Callers struggle with. Current location technologies don’t provide dispatchable address, only estimated search areas using crowdsourced data, or information like Height Above Ellipsoid or Height Above Terrain, data that’s less actionable, reliable and requires huge investment ($) in infrastructure.

Maybe the search area has reduced a little, but ultimately Responders still have to find emergency callers. If they dedicate too much time searching, that’s time taken away from helping the caller, and time is badly needed to enable better outcomes.

Such was the case on June 5th, 2020, when a 13-year-old girl called DC 9-1-1. Her mother Sheila Shepperd had gone into cardiac arrest. The young girl provided the correct address, yet the dispatcher unfortunately passed an incorrect location to Responders. It was well over 20 minutes before crews realized the error and arrived at the correct door. By then it was too late. Had additional and reliable location data been provided during the time of this emergency call it may have flagged the error earlier.

Council members interviewed after the tragedy stated:

“There are times when we do make a mistake. There are times when the caller provides a wrong address, and there are times when we give an address correctly and the responders interpret that address incorrectly,” said Holmes. “We depend on fast-thinking staff to stay on the line, and then correct and relay that information to folks on the ground. That is the reality of 9-1-1: you’re calling at your worst moment, and you might not be fully aware of where you are or what’s going on around you.”

Source: https://www.statter911.com/2020/11/19/new-dc-911-mistake-delay-confirmed-in-case-where-woman-died/

Humans make mistakes and always will. To err is human. In times of stress and emotion, cognitive performance and critical thinking takes a nosedive. We become the victims of our own brain struggling with information overload, time pressure, complexity, and uncertainty. In reality this is where location technology can assist, support, and reduce the ever-increasing workload of these incredible people.

“Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.” - Nikki Giovanni

A final note on the topic, I asked Rick Galway, Past President of NENA the following question related to offering Responders better resources and support:

Q Do you think that we look after our Responders as well as we should? 

A “No. If you attend an annual NENA conference, you’ll find that the best attended break-out sessions are the ones concerning coping with stress relief and the inherent tension of call taking and dispatch. The session room is always jammed with VFRs and supervisory staffers sitting on the floors and in the aisles just to be brought up to date on current work. The stress and mental anguish of working in a PSAP are often minimized by senior personnel.”

First responders risk their lives to help others every day. Ensuring they have the right door to knock on, the dispatchable location, will support them in their extraordinary work.

"If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got." - 20th April, 2022

What do Kodak, Nokia, Xero, Myspace, Yahoo, Sear, Toshiba, RadioShack, Motorola, Tyrus, Ask Jeeves, BlackBerry Motion, Polaroid, Commodore, and AOL all have in common?

They are well known companies which either failed, sold, or went bankrupt. And even whilst they accomplished great things, the unfortunate fact remains; they will also be remembered for their demise. And the primary causality was their failure to innovate at the correct time and/or in the correct way.

What is Innovation?

“Innovation is, at its core, about solving problems.” ~ Greg Satell, Global Transformation & Change Expert, International Keynote Speaker & Bestselling Author on Innovation, Transformation and Change.

Types of innovation

“Sustained” innovation generally happens most frequently within business because we’re usually seeking to improve or evolve what’s currently being done. We want to update existing capabilities within existing markets, and we have a relatively precise idea of what requires resolution and what skill domains are required to solve them.

Conventional strategies like strategic road mapping, traditional Research & Development and bringing in new resources and skill sets are usually the most effective in this situation. Design Thinking methods and feasibility of implementation studies are also enormously helpful if both the problem, and the skills needed to solve it, are understood well.

But prior to any process of innovation is the acceptance of change…and as a species we can voluntarily or involuntarily create barriers, misconceptions, and resistance to that.

What does all this have to do with Public Safety and our Emergency Number Network? Because if we are honest, Government, in whatever country you reside, has historically always been risk (perceived risk) averse and so slow to change and innovate.

Why does this matter?

In nature adaptation (change over time) to an environment ensures the survival of a species. Look at the Giant Panda. Cute right? …but from an evolutionary perspective many argue Panda’s are unsuspectingly heading down an evolutionary cul-de-sac. A specialized bamboo diet with low nutrition value, shrinking habitat, low conception, and cub survival rates…this points towards a species that’s doomed in the wild and struggling in captivity. 

Hyenas on the other hand…that’s a different cup of tea altogether. Not Canidae, or Felidae, but Hyaenidae. Both hunters and scavengers. A perfect dinner guest, they eat pretty much everything, including being able to digest bone. They operate in effective, well-organized clans (with a larger female as leader and matriarch). Fast, strong, muscular, intelligent, and great parents. They survive the odds by being well-rounded, flexible, adaptive.

A failure to “keep up” in areas such as location technology, could mean a real struggle to survive and prosper, and as a result, the consequences of failure.

"There's a way to do it better - find it." ~ Thomas Edison

How do we overcome the fear of change? How do we succeed and innovate?

There are multiple factors involved in minimizing the “pain” associated with change. If we address some of these in our quest for innovation, maybe we ensure we keep moving in the best direction for success.

  • What’s the advantage? Is it easily identifiable? Advantage is different to benefit, which is what you would “hope” to gain. Advantages are “things” which enable benefits to exist from the features and functionality offered.

  • What’s the cost? Time, money, power…these are factors “consumed” whilst going through any change. They should be perceived as “less” than the original state, to ensure barriers are easily overcome.

  • Are they credible? Does the innovating party have your trust? Who are they aligned or partnered with?

  • Is there compatibility? Does this change closely fit to what is already being done? Is it a natural step? Making it easier to move towards.

  • Is it simple? Is it straightforward…easy to accept?

  • And finally…Failure of consequence: This is the most crucial. What happens should you choose to NOT innovate?

 

The personality and design of the Emergency Number Network makes it highly risk averse to adopting new technologies and infrastructures. So, what is the failure consequence of not innovating?

At the grass roots of it, without implementing effective location technologies to find mobile callers, it’s people who are ultimately going to suffer; according to the FCC over 10,000 lives lost EACH YEAR. But it’s more than just that. There are other stakeholders involved in a 9-1-1 call not just the caller, but the call taker/emergency communications center and all the Responders too.

PTSD and job resilience are on the climb, alongside understaffing, underfunding and failure to adopt new technologies. These are the consequences we face today, and will continue to face, if our industry does not adapt.

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals." ~ Henry Ford.

Why we need to “dispatch” dispatchable location April 13th , 2022

The legacy landline telecommunications network of 40 years ago registered phone numbers to physical residential addresses…and finding an individual calling 9-1-1, and validating their indoor location, was relatively straightforward. It lead to the definition of what we know as dispatchable address:

            “…a location delivered to the PSAP with a 9-1-1 call that consists of the validated street address of the calling party, plus additional information such as suite, apartment, or similar information necessary to adequately identify the location of the calling party.” - FCC

In 2022, we are significantly more mobile, and this landline framework doesn’t apply anymore, it’s going extinct. Public Safety has needed to explore efficient technologies to keep up, but location accuracy of callers indoors, and for multi-storey buildings or campuses, is complex, since GPS, cell tower triangulation and crowd-sourced wi-fi don’t work well enough. With so many emergency calls originating from these areas, it’s not a problem we can ignore:

“Indoor locations are common for wireless 9-1-1 calls: Significant percentages of PSAPs had received wireless 9-1-1 calls from apartment buildings (93 percent), office buildings (88 percent), hotels (78 percent), retirement homes (70 percent), hospitals (55 percent) and college dorms (36 percent) in the last year.” -  PRNewswire article

"If you call 911 from a wireless phone indoors, cross your fingers, because FCC location standards for emergency calls do not apply indoors." "In most cities, just a few meters can mean the difference between several buildings and that can be the difference between life and death." - previous FCC Commissioner, now FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/why-calling-911-your-cell-not-always-good-idea-n99736

It’s predicted that by 2024 global mobile device subscriptions will top 17 billion. Today over 80% of emergency calls in the US are made from a mobile device (with similar stats for many other western countries), and this number will only increase as time moves on. The evolving mobile telephony market with; VoIP (voice over internet protocol, e.g. Skype, Zoom), multi-line enterprise phone systems (e.g. offices) and urban multi-storey developments/condos, all mean securing accurate mobile phone location is going to become more complicated and more in demand.

PSAPs using those combinations of cell tower ID/triangulation, GPS, and Wi-Fi to define a search area are using a process that’s flawed. It’s still uncommon knowledge for the general public, that once you walk inside a building you’re almost invisible to the emergency operator. If you cannot/do not verbally disclose your location, they need to ask more key questions to define your location, or estimate it… which means guess.

And it’s not just the indoor component that’s failing…walk up a flight of stairs, move to an office or apartment on a different floor and the PSAP still thinks you’re on ground level…So no longer just a horizontal search area to define, but also a vertical one.

Dispatchable location, is “the door to knock on” because that’s what it is. It’s not the door to your building, or your neighbour’s door, it would be your apartment door. With over 240 million calls to 9-1-1 in the US, 1 in 8 US citizens living in an apartment, 83% of US’s population in urban settings and 10,000 people dying needlessly each year, it’s what our industry needs, and our emergency callers deserve.

 

Have we lost our way pursuing better location for emergency calls?, reposted 9th March, 2022

Dispatchable location is the industry “gold standard”. No responder likes guessing if they need to kick down a door to save a stroke victim, or arriving 30 mins too late when someone is having a heart attack, or being turned around because the location information is incorrect.

Do we have dispatchable address for 9-1-1 mobile calls?

The short answer…NO.

The technology is available (more on that later), but Emergency Number systems around the globe don’t provide a door to knock on. If we had dispatchable location, people would not continue to die by the thousands every year.

Why don’t we have dispatchable address for mobile calls?

There’s no simple answer. The industry is exploring various technologies, some which claim to offer dispatchable, or others an “alternative”. But currently providing this detail is eluding the Industry.

Where are we today with dispatchable location?

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US began adopting 9-1-1 location-accuracy rules to establish timelines for wireless carriers to provide either dispatchable location information or coordinate-based location information.

Public-safety organizations such as APCO and BAPCO have stated a dispatchable location should be the ultimate goal since that location information is data Dispatchers can utilize easily.

In August 2019, and after different publications, orders and announcements, the FCC then implemented the Ray Baum Act, alongside an act called Kari’s Law (for direct dialing to 9-1-1 for MLTS).

The Ray Baum Act was directly concerned with LOCATION of the emergency caller, and the FCC split the requirement into 2 groups:

  • Multi-Line Telephone Systems (MLTS), such as hotels, office buildings etc.

  • Non-Multi-Line Telephone Systems (wireless, mobile calls)

    Before reading any further, remember that over 80% of calls to the Emergency Services are now through a mobile device…and over 60% are from indoor locations

For MLTS location, the FCC stated:

[“Section 506 of RAY BAUM’S Act, the Commission has adopted rules to ensure that “dispatchable location” is conveyed with 9-1-1 calls to dispatch centers, regardless of the technological platform used, including 9-1-1 calls from MLTS.  Dispatchable location means a location delivered to the PSAP with a 9-1-1 call that consists of the validated street address of the calling party, plus additional information such as suite, apartment, or similar information necessary to adequately identify the location of the calling party.]

In respect to mobile calls to 9-1-1, it becomes less transparent.

Several orders and re-orders were issued after August 2019. The most recent of these orders, the 6th Report and Order, expands the vertical location accuracy deployment options and became effective on September 28, 2020, over a year after the original Ray Baum Act order was announced.

Location accuracy for mobile calls was now separated into vertical and horizontal accuracy, and the deadline for April 2021 required:

Horizontal Location Accuracy Benchmark:

Nationwide providers must:

  • Achieve 50-meter (164ft.) horizontal accuracy (x/y location within 50 meters)

    OR

  • Provide Dispatchable location

For 80 percent of all wireless 9-1-1 calls. Non-nationwide providers had a little more leeway.

Vertical Location Accuracy Benchmark:

In each of the top 25 cellular market areas (CMAs), nationwide CMRS providers shall deploy either:

  • Dispatchable location

    OR

  • Z-axis technology.

After the April 2021 deadline, other deployment options and accuracies were further defined, however, the option of either Dispatchable location OR Z-axis now remains through to 2026, where carriers can effectively choose which location method above to deploy.

Looking closely at the horizontal requirements, the easier option is by far the 50-meter accuracy, which providers are clearly going to offer (since they already have the technology).

For the vertical location element, z-axis is the easier choice, and it does not provide accurate indoor location, simply an estimated barometric/ vertical reading as Height Above Ellipsoid. The data is also regarded as unusable by Responders and requires vast infrastructure changes.

Are we moving in the right direction to providing a dispatchable location for 9-1-1 or 112? Or are we providing a get-out clause bringing us a little closer, but not close enough to saving the 000’s of lives lost each year?

EML, a Location-based service for Private Networks, posted 2nd March, 2022

Emergency location intelligence for private/ corporate enterprises

The priority for any emergency plan is to protect people, but when a workplace or campus contains thousands, or even tens of thousands of individuals, spread across expansive complex areas and multi-storey buildings; effectively locating, communicating, and coordinating assistance is both fundamental and challenging. If a first responder arrives at a campus armed only with the main street address it’s unlikely they’ll find an emergency caller quickly if they’re located in a 6th floor meeting room.

Also, should an organization suffer from a larger-scale shelter in place, lockdown or evacuation situation, Responders then need to locate, in real-time, many citizens simultaneously, spread across large spaces. These events consist of people who are disoriented and panicked, or even worse unable to speak or injured. If they can’t provide you with an exact location, coordinating help can turn to chaos or be severely delayed.

During workplace emergency events like these, seconds make the difference between extra paperwork and risk to life and limb. Employees could be in imminent danger; there could be disruption to operations, property damage and environmental threats.

Emergency preparation is the foundation to ANY health and safety program, and is a legal requirement in many countries today:

The RAY BAUM’s Act in the US, Section 506, refers to the Federal Communication Commission rules requiring enterprises using multi-line telephone systems (MLTS) to provide an automated dispatchable location for all 9-1-1 calls. Dispatchable location data provided to the PSAP (public safety answering point) includes a valid civic address, plus additional information such as building, floor, suite, or room number. Any information that is deemed as “necessary” to adequately identify the location of the calling party.” Dispatchable location information is required for both fixed, static, and non-fixed, dynamic, phones/devices.

In the EU, the ECC (Electronic Communications Committee) published a report in 2019 outlining the concern around certain aspects of emergency calls originating from private/corporate networks. They reference Article 109 of the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) stating that private/corporate networks should:

“Promote the access to emergency services through the single European emergency number ‘112’ from electronic communication networks” which are not publicly available”.*

The Report concluded there is an issue with caller location information from private/corporate networks and since such networks are typically places of employment, the “safety and wellbeing of employees is paramount”.

EML provides overwhelming benefits

  • Individual location data and panic button support

  • Event management and resilience

  • Interoperability with current handset/ emergency app

  • Security Personnel location tracing

  • Asset management/ tracking

  • Privacy compliance

  • Next Generation, Smart City, IoT support

Affordable and accurate location data with EML will save your organization valuable time during an emergency response and fully support all your daily operations requiring location sharing.

EML can assist in locating and connecting employees, and visitors during any emergency event, providing detailed life-saving location data to school administrators, faculty, security personnel and first responders. This level of communication allows for actionable incident assessment, intelligence, and management, with dramatically improved event remediation. EML is the right tool for your Security and Administrative personnel and First Responders.

 If you would like more information on how you can leverage EML for your private enterprise, please contact us through LinkedIn or email: steve.ledbetter@eli-technology.com

 

Source: *Provision of Caller Location Information from Private/Corporate Networks approved 22 May 2019, EEC

 

You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data. ~ Daniel Keys Moran, posted 23rd Feb, 2022

Referred to as the “missing component” in mobile location technology, Z-axis is a hot topic.

It claims to resolve the two-plus-decade search for 3D geolocation information.  The final piece in the puzzle sending Responders to the right location. It suggests “floor level accuracy” for multi-storey buildings by providing additional altitude information.

For years the FCC has spoken of providing “dispatchable location”, the right door to knock on for Responders to find a mobile caller in distress.

So, the question is, does latitude (Y) + longitude (X) + altitude (Z) = dispatchable location?

There is no dispute, location inaccuracy of mobile calls still plagues the Emergency Number System around the globe. GPS, cell towers, triangulation and other location efforts using crowdsourced, noisy data estimate mobile location on a “best effort” basis as a “search area”. The problem has always been, how do we accurately locate a mobile caller in urban, and indoor environments? Because once a caller walks inside a multi-level building they become almost invisible.

And why does this matter?

Because more people live in apartment buildings, urban areas than ever before. More 9-1-1 calls are made through mobile devices than fixed ones. People need a 9-1-1 service. And thousands of lives globally are lost because of the problem.

Why Z-axis?

Z-axis refers to the “vertical” coordinate. GPS provides latitude and longitude, but for emergency calling there was nothing to identity a caller from anywhere other than ground floor. Hence the search for the Z component…to better assist Responders in narrowing down their searches.

But before moving on, here are some “vertical” definitions:

Altitude is classed as height above SEA LEVEL

Elevation is classed as height of the terrain above SEA LEVEL

HAE or Height Above Ellipsoid is synonymous with GPS. Ellipsoid refers to a mathematical shape of the earth's surface.

HAT or Height Above Terrain is your height above the ground.

How Z-axis works

  • Specific software is uploaded into smart devices already with barometric reading capability.

  • Mobile barometric readings are delivered to a cloud-based network.

  • Simultaneously, using preestablished physical network of “altitude base stations” reading are also taken to build a “picture of local environmental conditions”.

  • ·This “localized base station data” is also sent to the cloud-based network. 

  • The cloud-based network compares both readings, calculating a differential altitude reading.

  • ·This final reading is relayed back to the mobile device typically as a “altitude” or Height Above Terrain.

Considerations

1.    Location data is represented as altitude, HAE or HAT.

Typically location information is more useful in an address format. Reverse geocoding turns coordinates into a “physical address” (albeit with its own concerns). But this demonstrates that useable information is warranted and preferred. That’s what Responders are used to. Having anything other than an address raises the question “how useable or actionable is it?”. Plus is time and/or effort wasted trying to translate it?

If I told you I was at 180 meters altitude, or 202 ft HAT would you know where I am?

2.    Accuracy of the latitude and longitude coordinates.

GPS has accuracy issues, especially in downtown and urban areas as we’ve discussed in previous articles. So the GPS “ground location” is still a search area, and GPS doesn’t work well inside buildings. Now add into this data “Height Above Terrain”, or HAE, or an altitude reading, and what you have is still a 3D search area.

If you look at the picture further into this article you’ll see a map. The left picture shows what is typically provided in a “best case” situation of around 50 metres or approx. 164 ft. The middle picture adds in z-axis, so we have an additional vertical search area to consider.

Depending upon the city, many streets or rights of way are around 66 ft (20.1m) wide. It is extremely feasible for an emergency caller to be located in one building, but with error rates on lat/long/alt they could show up as being across the street in a different building all together.

source: https://www.chicago.gov/dam/city/depts/cdot/StreetandSitePlanDesignStandards407.pdf

3.    Accuracy of the vertical information

If Responders were provided with the correct building, they still have to search several floors to find the caller. The FCC state Z-axis benchmarks need to be +/- 3m, which is approximately 10ft “up or down”, meaning spanning a 3-floor search area. Better than before, but not a door to knock on. Also basements, parkades, lobbies are typically different ceiling heights, and there is usually no 13th floor in hotels or apartment buildings.

4.    Barometric (air) pressure readings are effected by:

  • Air temperature

  • Altitude or Elevation

  • Moisture

  • Weather system changes

Also, sprinkler systems, fires, and HVAC inside buildings alter indoor barometric readings, irrespective of “base-station” data. This could lead to greater inaccuracies.

5.    We need an altitude database

To determine the altitude of a mobile wireless device, and “equate it” to a vertical location, it’s necessary to create an “altitude database” for ALL x-y coordinate locations which have more than one possible altitude. Why?

Let’s duplicate an emergency scenario. You have 2 identical buildings, the emergency mobile caller is on the same floor, same time, same day, same network, same phone.

•          Building 1 is at sea level, the barometric reading is 10219 Pa.

•          Building 2 is 15 kms inland and has a barometric pressure of 10150 Pa.

Barometric pressure determines the altitude, even small increase/decreases creates a different result for caller vertical location: https://www.mide.com/air-pressure-at-altitude-calculator

Using the calculator in the link, the altitude for both barometric pressures yields results separated by approx. 43 metres. This doesn’t seem like much, but an apartment floor level is roughly 2.5- 3m.

Having a single barometric measurement for a single city isn’t enough. Close geographical locations require accurate representation of daily barometric pressure readings, to ensure accuracy.  This would involve measuring and collecting large amounts of data (requiring infrastructure adaptations) plus storage and maintenance.

Simplified representations of current location, location + altitude and location as dispatchable address

 

6. Additional infrastructure of beacons, antennas, and stations

Following on from point 5, acquiring comparative barometric data involves using a large network of long-range, low-cost broadcast beacons established throughout the urban environment placed in locations such as cell towers and rooftops. This additional hardware would require expensive build out, installation and maintenance. You can read more about it here: https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2020/07/13/pnt-0026.pdf

Summary

According to the FCC, “Dispatchable location means a location delivered to the public safety answering point (PSAP) with a 9-1-1 call that consists of the validated street address of the calling party, plus additional information such as suite, apartment number.”         

  • GPS coordinates, represented as x -axis (latitude) and y-axis (longitude)

  • Z-axis (altitude)

  • County/State/Province, City/Town, and civic street address

  • Indoor location with useable information such as floor, room, apartment number

There continues to be speculation and lingering concerns around how actionable the Z-axis metrics are. Yes, it provides more information which may narrow down the search area, but;

Does it overload Responders with additional useless data?

Last year APCO International replied to the FCC with a “Petition for Clarification”. They stated:

“[The recently adopted z-axis rules could result in no meaningful improvements to 9-1-1 location accuracy.]” Read more information here: https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/1025866713987/APCO%20ex%20parte%20911%20location%20Oct2019%20final.pdf

Furthermore, APCO said:

“Translating the Metric to Real-World Performance Operational challenges with the Commission’s proposed Z-axis metric are not the only significant problems. Adopting the proposed z-axis metric of +/- 3 meters for 80% of calls would not mean that the height of 9-1-1 callers will be known within 3 meters 80% of the time.

If field responders are attempting to match the 9-1-1 caller’s elevation using their own devices, several factors could inject additional, unquantified error beyond what is required by the proposed Z-axis metric or what would be reported by confidence and uncertainty information. Field responders who are attempting to match the elevation of a 9-1-1 caller will encounter variations in their own devices and z-axis solutions that will likely inject additional error.”

Additionally, FCC Commissioner (at the time) Jessica Rosenworcel commented that “[the height-above-ellipsoid (HAE) format that the carriers must use to deliver vertical-location information is not useful to Public Safety”].

She also said:

“There is not one 9-1-1 call center today that can take the raw numbers in height above ellipsoid and translate them into actionable dispatchable-location information. If we acted in this room today like the job is done, then we lied to you. And I’m afraid our decision was dishonest about whether the information is actionable. The fact so many 9-1-1 operators wrote into the agency and wrote to my office, telling me they were distressed that we would organize around information they could not use, I think is a testament to the fact that … we have a lot more work to do.”]

Read the full article here: https://urgentcomm.com/2019/11/23/fcc-adopts-new-rules-for-z-axis-vertical-location-of-wireless-911-callers-but-critics-question-their-practical-use/

So what’s the solution?

Emergency localization requires accuracy and reliability of data, useable information coming from existing infrastructures, providing dispatchable location at the time of the call. It should be interoperable with what we have and have the ability to evolve as NG 9-1-1 rolls out.

Let’s look at a Wi-Fi tag-based location system, where every Access Point within the existing Wi-Fi ecosystem becomes a verified location datapoint, or “tag”.  It associates an authoritative address and placement information with the omnipresent Wi-Fi equipment, exceeding the limitations of estimated GPS coordinates and providing complete dispatchable address.

EML’s tag-based system was successfully demonstrated live at EENA and NENA 2021. The screenshot below demonstrates how dispatchable address is provided immediately at the time of the test 9-1-1 call.

EML provides outdoor and rural location, but also the indoor component with the exact floor and room number of the caller. It’s the “door to knock on” the industry has been looking for, and it’s available today.

"I believe we don't have to make a trade-off between security and privacy. Technology gives us the ability to have both." ~ John Poindexter. Posted 2nd Feb, 2022

What is privacy?

Why does your home have curtains, drapes, blinds, or shutters? Why does your bathroom door have a lock, or why do you use passwords on your financial or social media accounts? These question provoke thoughts about what privacy actually is, whether virtual or real-world.

Privacy is an enormous and very “current” discussion topic. Impossible to cover all its complexities and controversies in a single article.

Generally though, privacy sets boundaries, and protects us from unwanted interference. Allowing us to negotiate our identity and interact with the world. Shielding us from unjustified use of power by State, Company, or other entity and allows us to regulate what is known about us and also done to us.

The European Convention on Human Rights, states rights to privacy(contained in Article 8) means respecting family and private life: https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Guide_Art_8_ENG.pdf

Why is privacy important?

Here is an extraordinary TEDTalks from Glenn Greenwald, one of the first reporters to write about the Edward Snowden files, and extensive surveillance of private citizens:

Greenwald makes a strong case on why you should care about privacy, even if you’re “not doing anything you need to hide”. He states, “There are all kinds of things we want to hide from other people, topics we discuss with our psychiatrist, lawyer, doctor, spouse - that have nothing to do with criminality”.

Location and privacy.

So what does privacy have to do with location data?

As technology becomes more sophisticated, and we do everything in a more “mobile capacity”, almost every device now has functionality that relies on GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and location mapping. From using taxi services and rideshare, looking at travel or weather apps, locating dining or food delivery options, “point-of-sale” ads, and shopping online, location “tracing/tracking” services are integrated everywhere. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a single smart device which does not use a location service of one type or another.

The Consequences

Yet, the mining and sale of location data has become huge business, and its misuse has many people worried. Apart from unwanted advertising, or targeted social media campaigns that allegedly try to alter election results, in the United States it is possible for some law enforcement agencies to obtain location data without a warrant. This data builds a profile of a user’s behavior, but can also lead to unnecessary police stops, false arrests and even false convictions. Privacy and civil rights advocates say the geographic scope of these warrants gives Police information about people in private locales, such as their homes or doctors’ offices.

But law enforcement aside, what about if location data is sold to an unwanted 3rd party, or discovered by a hacker or a thief?

Three years ago a survey conducted by HERE technologies, of over 8,000 consumers across 8 countries, divulged some interesting feedback:

https://www.here.com/PrivacyLocationDataGlobalConsumerStudy2018

One big find was that 84% of consumers do not trust laws and regulations to ensure that there is no misuse of location data.

Privacy-By-Design (PBD)

PBD is a concept centred around integrating “privacy”, into the creation and operation of all new devices, systems, networks, and even policies. Incorporating privacy solutions into the early phase development of any project allows potential problems to be identified, thereby preventing them in the future.

Ann Cavoukian, a former Canadian Information & Privacy Commissioner, was one of the first privacy experts to outline this concept. She defined the “7 principles of PBD”, which are considered the foundation of PBD. From enabling privacy settings by default, being proactive, and being transparent about data collection.

Historically, known data breaches have shown that privacy solutions are often an afterthought. PBD was devised to remedy this concern, by pushing corporations, developers, and administrators to be more proactive, making privacy their priority.

Today, organizations can implement PBD to fulfill compliance obligations from data protection regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR mandates stronger security for personal data.

Privacy and Dispatchable Address

As we move closer towards implementing ever more accurate location methodologies for our Emergency Services, one thing has become abundantly clear; who handles that data, how it is transferred, stored, and used is absolutely critical.

Accurate location will save more lives, but it must do so in a trusted, and privacy-compliant manner.

“When you stop chasing the wrong thing you give the right thing a chance to catch you.” ~ Lolly Daskal, posted 8th December, 2021

Many Public Safety magazines, webpages and social media sites host stories centred around the challenges our industry faces:

  • Roaming issues of mobile calls

  • Power and Service outages

  • Inconsistency of service/ Staffing shortages

  • Privacy concerns

  • Next Generation transitions and incompatibilities

  • Funding

  • Wireless mobile location accuracy

These topics are key to an optimal Emergency Number Network service. Build a solid foundation with them and the service will become stronger and more resilient. Ignore or neglect that foundation and it will crumble.

Wireless location accuracy is a long-time discussion topic. According to the FCC, providing dispatchable location for a mobile call could potentially save over 10,000 lives every year in the US alone. It’s a figure used repeatedly to incite our industry to resolve its mobile location issues. Plus, having accurate mobile location is not just an integral part of the current system, but essential for “Next Generation” services too.

Matt Gerst, Vice President of regulatory affairs for CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association) until August 2021, said in 2017:

"Being able to provide an address with a floor, suite or apartment number is very important to enhancing our ability to respond to indoor wireless 9-1-1 calls.”

Source: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/how-our-911-emergency-call-system-can-fail-us/

The EENA website also quotes:

“Accurate caller location in case of an emergency is one of the most significant pieces of information for emergency call takers. Caller location can have a huge impact on the safety of citizens in many ways and helps reduce response times.”

Source: https://eena.org/our-work/eena-special-focus/advanced-mobile-location/

Both comments concern mobile caller location…as important and relevant today as when first written. Sadly our industry still doesn’t provide dispatchable location for mobile calls…even after deploying several location methodologies.

In 2022 will we continue to chase location technologies that simply don’t work well enough? Or will we finally do the right thing and deploy something that does?

How many more lives do we need to lose before we get it right?

“Don’t be a panda…be a hyena”. ~ Emily Valiant

What do Kodak, Blockbuster, Xerox, Myspace, Yahoo, Toshiba, RadioShack, Toys r us, Ask Jeeves, BlackBerry Motion, Polaroid and Commodore all have in common?

They are well-known companies which either failed, sold, or went bankrupt. And even whilst they accomplished great things, the unfortunate fact remains; they will also be remembered for their demise. And the primary causality was their failure to innovate at the correct time and/or in the correct way.

So, what is Innovation?

“Innovation is, at its core, about solving problems.”

~ Greg Satell, Global Transformation & Change Expert, International Keynote Speaker & Bestselling Author on Innovation, Transformation and Change 

The four general types of innovation

“Sustaining innovation” is generally what happens most of the time within business, because usually we are seeking to improve or evolve what we’re already doing. We want to update existing capabilities within existing markets, and we have a relatively precise idea of what requires resolution and what skill domains are required to solve them.

Conventional strategies such as strategic road mapping, traditional Research & Development and bringing in new resources and skill sets are usually the most effective in this situation. Design Thinking methods and feasibility of implementation studies can also be enormously helpful if both the problem, and the skills needed to solve it, are understood well.

But prior to the process of innovation is the acceptance of change…and as a species we can voluntarily or involuntarily create barriers, misconceptions, and resistance to that.

What does all this have to do with Public Safety and our Emergency Number Network? Because if we are honest with ourselves, Government, in whatever country you reside, has historically always been risk (or perceived risk) averse and therefore slow to change and innovate.

But why does this matter?

In nature we know that adaptation (change over time) to an environment can ensure the survival of a species. Or not. Look at the giant panda. They are cute (so cute) …but from an evolutionary perspective it’s been argued they are heading down a cul-de-sac. Their specialized bamboo diet, providing low nutrition and energy, their small population size, shrinking habitat, low conception, and cub survival rates all point towards a species that is doomed in the wild and struggling in captivity.  Harsh and sad.

Hyenas on the other hand…that’s a species I can get behind. When I was a Field Guide in South Africa (another great time in my life), they became one of my absolute favourite species. Why? Well, if you ever get the opportunity to get “up close and personal” with one of these magnificent creatures you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

Not a canine, or a feline. Hyaenidae. They hunt…and they scavenge. They eat pretty much everything, including digesting bone. Females have female and what resembles pseudo male, genitalia (!). They operate in effective, social, well-organized clans (with the female as leader and matriarch), they are fast, strong, muscular, intelligent, and great parents. The complete opposite of a panda. They are adaptable, tough opportunists.

Whether it’s Nature or even Technology, a failure to “keep up” with what is happening in the world means you may struggle to survive or prosper, and as a result, there will be consequences of failure.

 

"There's a way to do it better - find it."

~ Thomas Edison

 

How can we overcome the fear of change? How can we succeed and innovate?

There are considered to be many factors involved in minimizing the “pain” associated with change. Some of these are consciously thought about, others more instinctive. And if we address them in our quest towards innovation, we can ensure movement in the more successful direction:

Advantage: Ask yourself if this easily identifiable? Advantage is different to benefit, which is what you would “hope” to gain. Advantages “things” that enable benefits to exist from the features and functionality offered.

Cost: Time, money, power…factors which are “consumed” whilst going through any change. They should be perceived as being “less” than the original state to ensure barriers are easily overcome.

Credibility: Does the innovating party have your trust? Who are they aligned or partnered with?

Compatibility: Does this change closely fit to what is already being done? Is it a natural step? Making it easier to move towards.

Simplicity: Is it straightforward so it is easy to accept?

And finally…Failure of consequence: This is the most crucial. What happens should you choose to NOT innovate?

The Emergency Number Network is still highly risk averse in adopting new technologies and infrastructures. So what is the failure consequence there?

When our system doesn’t evolve, by not implementing effective location technologies to find mobile callers, it’s people who are ultimately going to suffer. Whether it’s the First Responder or Dispatcher struggling to provide the service effectively, or the person calling 9-1-1 or 112 (10,000 US lives lost annually).

And we should not allow that to continue.

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals."

~ Henry Ford.

“The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The birth of our Emergency Number Network…where it all began.

It was 2600 BC, and the Egyptian “Imhotep” described the diagnosis and treatment of over 200 diseases. Jump to 460 BC with the birth of Hippocrates, the Greek father of medicine, who began its scientific study and even prescribed a form of aspirin. Then in 130 AD Galen, a Greek physician to gladiators and Roman emperors was born…

Nurses were first recognized way back around 268 BC to 232 BC, during the rule of Buddhist Indian Ashoka, and became established into the modern vocation we know today with the assistance of people such as Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), a British nurse during the Crimean War (1853- 1856).

The first firefighting attempts can be tracked back to 2nd century (!) when a Greek inventor named Ctesibus built a basic hand pump that could squirt water. Then after nearly being destroyed by uncontrollably large fires, Ancient Rome created one of the first fire departments of approximately 7,000 paid recruits!

Ambulance and paramedics go back as far as Ancient Rome, where a formal process for managing and helping injured and aging Roman Centurions, no longer fit to fight was developed. These individuals were tasked with the organization, removal, and care of the wounded from the battlefield. A similar situation also existed during the Crusades (1095 AD), with the Knights Hospitaller (a medieval and early modern Catholic military order) filling a similar function.

Emergency Dispatchers in the US began as recently as the 1970’s, when in Phoenix, Arizona, a paramedic, Bill Tune, who was simply present at a 9-1-1 dispatch, provided unplanned and unscripted pre-arrival instructions to a mother of a nonbreathing baby. The child survived and the then Fire Chief, instructed the center to begin routinely offering these prearrival instructions. The program was referred to as  “medical self help” and relied on no formal dispatch protocols or scripts.

All these roles have grown and intertwined with one another over hundreds, even thousands, of years.

More recently on the 30th June, 1937 our emergency number system began in London, UK with the number 999, which sounded a buzzer and flashing red light to attract the operator's attention.

In 1959, 999 was then adopted in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada but they later changed the number to 9-1-1 in 1972, to become more consistent with the newly adopted U.S. emergency number. In the United States, the first 9-1-1 call was made in Haleyville, Alabama in 1968, and in the EU the single emergency number 112 has been used for 30 years.

We have a long history and have come a long way…humans have an innate ability to think selflessly, behave altruistically and show empathy towards others. Cooperation and collaboration make us both stronger as a group, and also happier as an individual.

The principles of both our ancient and modern healthcare systems are based on foundations of wanting to help, heal, nurture, and save our fellow human beings. There may have been some ulterior motives along the way, to do with winning a war or two, but many advancements and changes came about by wanting to make society better and safer, and our Emergency Services today still holds true to those values. As our modern society continues to show increases in incidence of crimes, accidents, medical & health emergencies, infrastructure inadequacies and the continued growth and mobility of the population, it will continue on.

The ESN has become a service we rely upon every single second of every day. It’s the call you never want to make but will at least once in your life. Approximately 240 million 9-1-1 calls are made in the U.S each year, or approximately 600,000 per day. In Canada, around 12 million 9-1-1 calls are dialed annually, for the UK it’s estimated at around 33 million, and across the European Union 150 million were ‘112’ calls.

We will continue to be more mobile and digitally connected and our Emergency Number Infrastructure and technology will need to keep pace.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.” For the ESN that direction includes changing the inadequacies of our current system and looking to new advancements. We’ll talk about those next.

Thank you

“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, posted 17th November, 2021

PART 3.

When the decision was made to allow implementation of either Dispatchable location OR an alternative (such as Z, or coordinates) there was intense industry concern and scrutiny.

An article from late 2019 summarizes the feelings and response to Z-axis (HAE) implementation over dispatchable:

“While the 9-1-1 vertical-location order was adopted, the vote was not unanimous. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel dissented in part, noting that the height-above-ellipsoid (HAE) format that the carriers must use to deliver vertical-location information is not useful to public safety.

“There is not one 9-1-1 call center today that can take the raw numbers in height above ellipsoid and translate them into actionable dispatchable-location information,” Rosenworcel said during a press conference following the FCC open meeting. “If we acted in this room today like the job is done, then we lied to you. And I’m afraid our decision was dishonest about whether the information is actionable.

Rosenworcel said there is a “significant fear” that the absence of a dispatchable-location requirement in the order approved yesterday means that dispatchable location may not be addressed by this FCC, although associated notice seeks comments on improvement to 911 location accuracy and alternatives to dispatchable location.”

Source: https://urgentcomm.com/2019/11/23/fcc-adopts-new-rules-for-z-axis-vertical-location-of-wireless-911-callers-but-critics-question-their-practical-use/

It’s now late 2021, and it appears our industry is showing acceptance (hopefully in the interim) for other forms of mobile location as viable alternatives to the “gold standard” of DL/DA. Even though there are concerns over the “alternatives” accuracy and functionality.

But the mission and goal to provide dispatchable location is not over.

An article from late 2020 acknowledges that z-axis may be more of a steppingstone in the journey towards providing more concrete location data. Entitled:

“Location technology will continue to evolve in 2020”

“While this implementation by the public-safety industry is underway, 2020 also will bring new ideas from public-safety stakeholders, including technology leaders, about how to further evolve indoor- and vertical-location accuracy and find a way to convert measurements beyond z-axis measurements, to floor levels and ultimately to true “dispatchable” location.”

You can read the full article here:

https://urgentcomm.com/2020/01/14/2020-is-the-year-when-vertical-location-becomes-a-reality-for-public-safety/

In our future blogs we will explore the other most common modes of geolocation, what impacts they are having and ultimately what they mean for the people who matter most…the emergency callers. 

“All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward”. ~ Ellen Glasgow, posted 3rd November, 2021

PART 1.

As we have discussed previously, our industry is exploring various technologies to acquire better location accuracy during an emergency mobile call. It’s changing, and trying to adapt.

When everyone had a landline registered by their telephone company to a physical residential address, finding a 9-1-1 or 112 caller’s location was relatively straightforward. This was described as a dispatchable address, and represented (according to the FCC) as:

“…a location delivered to the PSAP with a 9-1-1 call that consists of the validated street address of the calling party, plus additional information such as suite, apartment, or similar information necessary to adequately identify the location of the calling party.”

Global mobile device subscriptions will exceed 17 billion by 2024, and currently over 80% of emergency calls are made from a mobile device. With the evolving market of mobile telephony, VoIP (voice over internet protocol, such as Skype, Zoom), swathes of multi-line enterprise telephone systems (such as office spaces) and huge urban/downtown multi-storey developments/condominiums etc., securing an accurate mobile phone location is now significantly more complicated.

PSAPs in the majority countries/ states/ provinces/ districts/counties still use combinations of cell tower triangulation, GPS and sometimes Wi-Fi to narrow down their search if the caller isn’t sure where they are. Yet, these changes to assist in locating a caller remain extremely imperfect, especially for urban and indoor locations (including multi-level and/or underground buildings), or private network spaces like school campuses. Once you are calling from inside an environment like this, you become almost invisible to the emergency operator or dispatcher. If you don’t disclose your location verbally, they are left to estimate…which literally means guess.

As mentioned before, mobile location accuracy statistically varies between 5-95% (which is unnervingly huge) since it includes location inaccuracies inside environments like an office tower or apartment building. And if you move off ground level, you still appear, to the PSAP and Responders, to be on the ground level…this is not ideal.

Dispatchable location, as the name describes, means the location which allows emergency crews to be “dispatched” and to get there on time. It’s verifiable location data and should be provided with high-level detail and confidence. We call it, “the door to knock on” because that’s what it is. It’s not the door to your apartment building, or your neighbor’s door 3 doors down, it would be your door.

Our industry is changing, but our movement towards providing more accurate location is not advanced as it could be, or should be. Not yet.

Thank you

The EML (Emergency Mobile Location) methodology provides an “actual door to knock on”. It is the vital location tool that will support, improve, and drive the Emergency Service Industry into its requirement for delivering dispatchable address and Next Generation Services.

It’s about putting the right information into the right hands, so more lives are saved.

If you’d like to learn more about EML, you can find a demonstration video here: