UNT team dialing up better 911
Internet, mobile phone sources pose problems for emergency system
12:41 AM CST on Sunday, February 15, 2009
By Candace Carlisle / Staff Writer
When a driver crashes a car on the highway and all the occupants are
knocked out, who would call 911?
The answer could be your cellphone, says Ram Dantu, a professor of
computer science and engineering and director for Center for
Information and Computer Security at the University of North Texas.
Programming your phone to detect a rollover and dispatch emergency
officials to the scene is one partial solution to a larger predicament
of outdated 911 services, Dantu said.
“The existing 911 technology is completely outdated. The whole
thing needs to be updated,” Dantu said.
Emergency dispatchers also are unable to locate some callers who use
Internet-based phones — employing “voice over Internet protocol”
— that provide inaccurate locations with wide variances, which can
cause fatal delays, he said.
Those locations could vary to such a degree that someone calling for
help in Denton could appear to be calling from Singapore, hindering
the work of 911 dispatchers, Dantu said.
Reports of delayed emergency response times and misdirected
ambulances have increased across the country, leading to a government
mandate to solve the problem.
Solving the problem has become so important that the National Science
Foundation gave Dantu two research grants totaling more than $1
million to overhaul 911 technology.
The grants — one aimed at infrastructure and the other for research
— will be important for everyone in the country, said Taieb Znati, a
division director at the National Science Foundation.
“With 911 Internet, you have to address multiple issues,” Znati
said. “It was an exciting proposal that was highly competitive.”
He said National Science Foundation grants are only given to about 10
percent of applicants each year.
But Dantu, who has worked at high-level positions in the private
technology sector, has earned six grants in a row within the last
three years.
He will lead the research group — his team along with researchers
from Columbia University and Texas A&M University — that he hopes
will help bring next generation emergency services to the country.
Along with getting 911 services up to speed, Dantu and his research
team are looking at ways to secure 911 call centers from online
threats and guarantee emergency service during times of heavy phone
usage, such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks.
The research team will also work to enhance services for the deaf and
hearing-impaired, he said.
Dantu said new technology has the potential to change the industry by
creating a form of artificial intelligence in cellphones that can
predict the behavior of their owners and assist them.
One of Dantu’s research assistants, Lonnie Langle, is working on
updating an accelerometer — much like a video game controller that
can detect movement — to register a rollover and call 911.
Langle said he has started simulations on a toy car to gauge speed
and stop motions that could indicate an accident.
Dantu said government trials could be ready in a matter of months,
but consumers will have to wait.
“The technology we’re developing is futuristic,” Dantu said.
“The deployment to real people could be in another five years.”
CANDACE CARLISLE can be reached at 940-566-6889. Her e-mail address
is [email protected].
Source:
http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/localnews/stories/DRC_911_0215.18f65ecb.html
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