News: IoT and Automatic Emergency Calls

There are plenty of articles about IoT and other new technologies describing what it will be like in the future. I’m always pleased when we get from an initial idea at least to a prototype. For example I can’t wait for Apellix drone to paint my house or clean the windows 🙂

The original concept of European Automatic Emergency Call (eCall) was presented back in 1999. Since that time the project was delayed several times and it was difficult to find anything we could really touch except for some powerpoints. Finally it has started to work at least in pilots. In Prague, Czech republic the first car recently called 112 (emergency) because of a real road accident.

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This is an emergency!

I used to enjoy the feeling to be for two weeks in the mountings skiing or canoeing down the river and not to know anything about what happens in the world, without a weather forecast and without knowing about my friends and family. That’s what I call relaxation 😉 Mobile phones changed our behavior significantly. We’re always reachable and we never ever really switch off unless there is no signal.  When there is no signal we start to feel uneasy – we can’t call and what if anything happens?

Mobile communication changed our way how we act in case of emergency and also its effectiveness. Emergency crews can get on scene much faster, have more information and can update emergency centers with the latest development. It is even possible to provide so called assisted first aid. On the other hand people rely sometimes on mobiles a bit too much.

„ZZS KV, KZOS v Jihlavě (01)“ od Radim Holiš, Wikimedia Commons. Licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0 cz via Wikimedia Commons

 

To support emergency calling is one of the basic requirements for VoLTE. When we need to reach a Public Safety Answering/Access Point (PSAP) or Emergency Control/Communication Centre (ECC), the common VoIP is not enough. That’s why we have some new elements in the IMS network. The relevant standards are RFC 5031, 3GPP TS 24.229 and TS 23.167.