Transmitting location to 911 operators- please help

  • Replies:0
Brian Schibler
  • Forum posts: 1

Oct 8, 2016, 5:40:04 AM via Website

I know almost nothing about coding for phones (or coding in general for that matter :D), so I need help from someone who is knowledgeable to know if my idea is plausible. So, I am an EMT with a basic knowledge of how 911 operators/dispatch works and I want to try to improve location data transfer to 911 dispatchers (it is the number one most important part of a 911 call). 911 operators have a very hard time getting locations of cell phones during emergencies because the location request has to go through the phone company which creates a lot of unreliability due to various factors such as trying to transfer data through radio frequencies. Some areas report less than half of all 911 cell phone calls actually transmitting location this way. I would like to see an app or even something pre-programmed into operating systems that basically implements a direct location transfer that is independent of the phone company being used. Basically, the app/phone setting would transmit some sort of tone through the audio at the beginning of any call to 911. This tone would code for the latitude and longitude of the phone as reported via the phones location app (using either gps or wifi). you only need latitude and longitude accurate to 4 decimal places to be within 10 meters of a location (currently 911 operators get anywhere from 5 miles to 100 meters at best); therefore the tone would only need to transfer 14 digits (7 for latitude and 7 for longitude) to give an accurate location. This can easily be done with monotone code such as morse code in less than 5 seconds. Since this would be between computers instead of people and different pitches can be used for different digits, I'd imagine a more efficient code could be developed that is much quicker at transferring 14 digits over a call. With this implementation, no data is relayed through phone companies because all the information is encoded in the audio of the call itself, so as long as the call is placed to the 911 center and your phone has a gps or wifi location, the location would be transmitted. In addition, this feature could be added to phones or utilized through an app without any reliance on phone companies or 911 dispatch centers to start. As the feature becomes more widespread, dispatch centers can then choose to upgrade their equipment to be able to read the tones and get instant location; if not, the call would continue like normal with no harm done, the tone would just be ignored. So that is my basic idea and I'm not even sure if it's been thought of or tried before, but I would really appreciate it if someone who has a better understanding of coding and how cell phone calls work in general could at least tell me if this idea could work and be implemented.

Reply