Next Generation 911 is coming
One of the services that has become so ingrained in our society in the US is 911, the emergency service that is just 3 digits away from landline and mobile phones. Mobile phones also have the added benefit of GPS location services allowing 911 services in many parts of the country to tell where the caller is located, something that is of great benefit in emergencies like automobile accidents. The emergency service industry is getting ready for Next Generation 911 that allows the use of text messages and phone video as part of the 911 call. This will bring current technology into play in these critical emergency situations, and my own city of Houston is in discussions to come of age in this area.
The ability to use phone video as a part of 911 calls may seem to be unnecessary but officials point out that it can provide the emergency dispatcher with much-needed information to make a quick decision on who to dispatch to the scene. Imagine you are driving and come across a bad traffic accident with injuries. With Next Generation 911 you can shoot video of the scene with your mobile phone camera and shoot that to the 911 operator. It would quickly make apparent the emergency agencies that needed to be dispatched, thus saving critical time. I can see this making a tremendous difference in the response time for such tragedies.
(via Houston Chronicle)
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
I’m a fan of technology innovation & I like to see new services replace out-dated ones, however, I don’t like the idea of reporting emergencies via text for a number of reasons.
1. Two-way communication is key to ensure each party understands the circumstances. I can’t imagine the back & forth chatter between a person reporting an emergency & an emergency operator happening over text.
2. While *much* better, the SMS network still drops & delays messages often. It’s to unreliable of a service to use for emergency situations.
3. Text messages containing “short hand” & typos are sure to make communication even more difficult.
4. As if making a phone call while driving wasn’t distracting enough. Now imagine someone witnessing a wreck & trying to text message in the information all while driving.
I think text messaging works great for quick communication between two parties, but not for reporting emergencies.
Dang, after reading the headline, I thought the next generation 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera was going to appear at mobile tech manor…
> This will bring current technology into play in these critical emergency situations,
Not if you have an iPhone 3G ;)
I’m also a big fan of mobile technology, and believe that this is the right direction to take with next-gen 911.
With that said, I really question how viable mobile video will be during an emergency 911-like situation. It’s not the vid itself – of course it’ll capture things a person describing a situation would miss. I really am thinking of actually how long a video takes to capture & send. It’s also susceptible to the same delay’s and delivery failures as Brian described above for text messages.
Try capturing a 30 second video and emailing it from your phone to your home email right now. Aside from whether you can do it or not, see how long it actually takes. We’d fart around too long button pushing while someone could bleed out.
Somehow, this will eventually be figured out. The idea I have when reading this post is a 1 or 2 button combo that start an immediate QIK-like video feed to a 911 operator where I could shoot the emergency and then turn the cam on myself and give more data face2face (almost). It’ll happen, but the way video is handled currently on mobile networks as an MMS message won’t work.
Great post James – it actually got me thinking about this when I really hadn’t before. Thanks!
Rick