| This sounds amazing. I recently witnessed an intoxicated man collapse on the street in front of me, so I was first on scene and had to call our local version of 911 (I live in Australia).
Of course I am asked where I am, the address and street, and I had no idea.
I was at the bus stop I walk to everyday, surrounded by building with names I couldn't read very well at night, and no street signs near me.
I was eventually able to work it out, but that was precious moments we lost that could have made things significantly worse in a different case. The man was passed out cold (he had hit his head very hard when he fell) and had a very weak pulse and weak breathing, I performed CPR until the ambulance arrived and he started to regain consciousness.
The ambulance took a very long time to arrive and then find us, I had to get other bystanders to stand out in the street to wave and shout.
When the ambulance left he was fully conscious and able to converse with the officers. This whole thing of course seemed absurd, as we were all carrying smartphones equipped with HD cameras, GPS, and radios. In another case, during the Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand, I was lucky to be involved in a volunteer group which started offering free support services to those on the ground.
We ran a text information service where people could text in questions, including asking for the nearest help center based on their location (which they had to provide via text). We would likewise respond over text.
We were able to help people find the help they needed, by making it available over text we also were able to reduce the already overloaded cellular services (voice calls are much more expensive than text).
We helped dispatch appropriate emergency services to people in need, but it was still very much copying address information as text between various jury rigged systems (written by us during the incident). I hope we can improve these systems in the coming years, it is especially important to improve them to be redundant to things such as cellular system overload (which is very common during major crisis). |
Anyway, it's a great initiative, and one where the possible privacy implications seem to have been mitigated, while providing a massive benefit.
[1] https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/new-emergency-11...