A free Emergency+ App was launched late last week by emergency services across Australia which can pinpoint your location to get the help you need to you faster. If you need to call for emergency assistance and you’re unaware of your exact location, the 000 call taker will ask you if you have the app on your phone and if you do to verbally read out your Latitude and Longitude GPS coordinates which are displayed in the app.
The developers say that nearly 70% of calls made to 000 now originate from mobile phones, and distressed callers often make mistakes when trying to describe their location. The app removes a lot of this guesswork and allows emergency services to respond to the location of the caller.
The app also includes information on which agency you should call to assist in a variety of situations – eg, fire, flood, road accident or domestic disturbance. As an emergency services volunteer, I still urge people if in doubt pick up the phone and dial 000 – it’s better to be safe than sorry where lives are concerned.
While the use of this app is in it’s early stages, it’s something that has the backing of all states and territories in order to improve the response times of all emergency services to emergency situations. It’s only a few megabytes, and is worth the space to install it on your phone.
The app can be downloaded for Android or iOS and has been developed by the national Triple Zero Awareness Work Group.
GPS & Wifi not very good. Our home address comes up on someone else 10 minutes away from our home. If we used this in an emergency app then we did not know where we are and no-one would find us.
Great app, it used 64% of my battery last night with 9 hours of GPS use….. not an app to recommend.
It’s the no# 1 battery hog in my battery stats, so I greenified it, whilst still able to use it in an emergency.
I’m confused… what’s so hard about transmitting phone number and lat + lon coords to a server? Not even a few KB of data, surely?
Privacy issues for starters…
There’s some legal hurdles to overcome before having an app that can freely transmit your location data to emergency services as some users are extremely cautios about such things (particularly where Police are concerned)
Wait so this app is basically just a bloated GPS coordinates display… it’s no better than launching Maps to find your location and then relaying it. It also relies on you being in a state where you’re able to launch the app, navigate the clunky interface and then read out/confirm sixteen digits to an operator.
Fair point. I’d point out first of all having someone ask direct questions during an emergency can help you to focus so that’s not so bad.
Secondly it probably makes more sense than asking “Do you happen to know your current latitude and longitude?” even if the app is a bit clunky it’s a known variable versus another random app.
The other thing is until recently, not all emergency services have had the ability (through their own software) to directly query lat/long to pinpoint someone’s location.
it’s a big step forward to improving response times of services to emergencies, but like anything will have some teething problems. The fact that it’s been recognised by all states and territories is a great thing!
That’s a little harsh. In most instances it’s actually likely to be used by someone reporting an incident where they’re not the one in trouble. Also I’d imagine in most instances they’d just read the address. What you’re saying is not wrong but the simple fact that it brings the info together in one place could be very handy. There’s been a few times I’d have liked to have an app along these lines.
What’s hard about reading out an address? and then giving the accuracy in metres? GPS coordinates would only be relevant for people in the bush/desert or off the coast.
Clunky interface? it’s got 3 screens? and all the important info is on the first screen… how is that clunky?
The only problem with this app is that it is keeping GPS running when you exit.. they fix that and it’ll be perfect.
Link to app is for logo quizz
Yet another quality, well checked article on Ausdroid. And they’re looking to ask for $10 subscriptions. There’ll be a more competent competitor soon.
AusDroid is gonna go subscription??
No. It’s just a question we floated in the survey.