Knowing the exact location of people calling the 112 emergency number is crucial and will save lives. It allows the emergency services to route the calls to the most appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), make quicker interventions and help verify the authenticity of the calls.

Medical research shows that for certain pathologies, a one-minute reduction in the emergency response time improves the odds of survival by 24%.  In fact the East of England Ambulance Service demonstrated that mobile emergency calls took on average 30 seconds longer than fixed line emergency calls to get the address of the incident. In the case of stressed or injured victims, this goes to 3 min.

This document is an update of the previous version published in 2011, and takes into consideration the technological advances that took place since then. It includes an overview of both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ implementation methods in the EU member states, as well as common problems encountered. Moreover, it offers a full analysis of the available technologies and it lists EENA requirements, as well as recommendations to relevant stakeholders for each type of network. The recommendations offered are in the citizens’ best interest and aim to provide a safer and more efficient framework for caller location in support of emergency services.

One of the main authors of the document, Frederic Bruneteau, PTOLEMUS Consulting Group's Managing Director, said:

“Any modern smartphone has an hybrid positioning platform that provides the best-available location depending on the environment and available sensor signals, i.e. GNSS but also Cell-ID, WiFi and MEMS. If a smartphone is used to make an emergency call, that information should be made available to the PSAP.”

The ‘Caller Location in Support of Emergency Services’ Operations document was written in partnership with PTOLEMUS Consulting Group, an EENA member based in Brussels.

To read the document, please click here.

EENA will also shortly publish a related document focusing exclusively on A-GNSS as a caller location technology in Q1 2015.