Small Brush Fire
The Court and Spark/ Bless You/Absolutely Kosher Records
Download "Fireworks" (MP3, 192kbps)
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At the office party/ bbq, i had the pleasant opportunity to hang with cohorts - people with whom i share memories and new faces with whom there is much future. and... the chance to get very very drunk and somehow remain articulate enough to expose my most recent lame idea - reinventing cellular emergency reporting - a more efficient emergency reporting and broadcast system built for the mobile phone era in the digital age, utilizing the tools available for transmitting information via a mobile device which far outweigh the act of a phone call.
with slurred words and distinct inabilities to describe why i like my idea, i spat out the plan to anyone who would listen. Some did, but walked away in minutes, others just looked at me blankly probably wondering why they were stuck talking about Attention models, SMS, XML, and the communication systems of bees (and how bee communication mirrors human interweb experience). I babbled on and on about the ease of information transfer via xml and how, with geotags, a non profit MVNO, and sms, the process by which emergency communication occurs, and broadcast between devices/ between devices and hubs, can be made not only more efficient but more adaptable to an evolving digital and cellular nation. Our cellular lives have made us the mapmakers of information, good and bad.
I know that next to drinking too much at the office party and yapping about bees is not the wisest move. nor is posting the same idea in a blog. The technology business is almost as bad as the music business, con artists everywhere, two faces for every greeting - a depressing jungle for any honesty driven idea person. Which is why it's almost more fun to give it up for free. to whore out the idea knowing that sometimes jealousy is the only real way to bring life into an idea. Now i don't know if anyone will like this idea, or want it. but i do think there is room for improvement in the way our mobile devices serve as emergency broadcast systems as well as informative emergency tools. And I don't care if anyone likes this enough to do anything with it, because (go figure) it's a not for profit idea to begin with. If anyone were to steal this and profit from it, i'd probably blog about the perversion of humanity, an expected outcome in a lazy consumerist society.
So here's the basics. its not that revolutionary. it all happened when i got a txt msg from a person on the road, who saw an unattended brush fire. they asked me to look online for a spot to report unattended brush fires. immediately i wanted the sms to have geotags so i could just enter those tags into a form and let whoever (the california hwy patrol) know of the issue, while remaining anonymous b/c i like anonymity. and privacy rights.
so...
- A state gets a non-profit MVNO for emergency communication
- all cellular/ mobile 911 calls are routed through this mvno to standard 911 emergency triage
- using the mnvno enables information to be transmitted via sms and can also utilize xml
- all transmissions to 911 will use geotags so latitude and longitude are determined
- cellular phones are also gps devices/ geotags will automatically attach to any communication within the non profit emergency mvno
- privacy rights (phone caller info) will apply - phone caller name will not be revealed
- reverse 911 messages can include photos
- photos can also be included in emergency sms messages sent from a caller to the 911 dispatch
- can also include video from video phones
as applied to the small brush fire, the witness would simply send a txt or a photo (or both) to 911. that's it. the picture/ txt message would carry all the necessary info.
there are open questions and i don't yet have answers. like......what if the 911 folks want to call back? is that an invasion of privacy? i am leaning toward a big no on that. as long as the name is withheld, what's the harm in allowing 911 triage call back a message sender to ask questions. In addition, having access to the phone number will enable police to police the system. false reports will be treated the same from a cell phone as from the land line. I'm not an expert on emergency broadcast privacy procedures, but i do believe in the ease of mailability of xml and the reality of cellular renaissance. And whether or not my non profit mvno idea (used for emergency message transmissions) makes any sense - well, i'm not sure i care. like unattended brushfires, some ideas burn hot with potential while drastically vulnerable to a change in weather.
technorati tags: mvno, emergency, court_and_spark, promonet, technocrat
1 comments:
Excellent idea.
The addition of audio/visual/meta information to a 911 transaction would greatly enhance the responder's assessment of a given emergency situation. I was once an operator for a Lifeline service ( i've fallen and i can't get up--press button--talk to awesome dude ); I found it was extremely difficult to assess a situation over the phone, especially when someone was even mildly incapacitated.
Because we have evolved to rapidly identify patterns in streams of data, a system that supplies us with as many streams as possible allows us to react faster. In the Lifeline situation, the steps were thus:
1. a person would be in some kind of trouble and press the button hanging around their neck.
2. I would receive an alarm. Once received, I would have to use a code transmitted to me to look-up their address and phone number.
3. I would then call the person and attempt to figure out what was going on via questions, ambient sounds, or other aural clues.
4. Depending on my assessment of the situation, ambulances, police, neighbors, or family members were called.
Often, they could not speak. In these situations, I had no choice but to stay on the line and call 911. The only information I could supply was,"this person is in some kind of trouble."
If I see a picture/video of a person unconscious on the floor, along with time stamps and geocode data, and no sound on the audio feed...I can call an ambulance and fully describe the situation. They will know, with a fair amount of precision, what to expect when they arrive on the scene. Saves lots of time in a critical situation.
So, the concept is great one. Yes, you would have to incorporate huge penalties for mis-using/abusing the service...but, those penalties are pretty much already in place.
Phones can already send gps information (and soon will encode this in the pictures/video taken by the phone). Location can also easily be determined by triangulation among cell towers. Once a receiving channel is in place, 911/other emergency responders can use this channel IN ADDITION to their primary communication channels to enhance situational awareness and respond faster. In general, I think this would eliminate the usual barrage of questions needed to ascertain what the hell is going on- and this can only be good.
ps--bee communication rules, as does ant path optimization. Some good stuff: Out Of Control
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