Your smartphone knows your location well enough to send a car to where you’re standing in a busy city, map a morning run through the woods, or navigate inside an airport.
But if you call 911 from that same mobile phone, emergency responders will only have a vague sense of where to send an ambulance, fire truck, or police car.
The difference in distances can be the difference between life and death.
Apple is rolling out a new feature in its next iPhone software update to send emergency responders instant, precise location information in the US. The update, coming in iOS 12 later this year, calculates a caller’s location based on data collected from WiFi access points, nearby cellular towers, and GPS.
The tricky part isn’t finding out where a caller is — Apple has been using its hybrid location technology since 2015 — but relaying that information to a fragmented and aging 911 system built for landlines.
Of the 240 million calls made to 911 each year, more than 80% are from mobile devices, according to NEMA.
Apple is working with a startup called RapidSOS, which specializes in sharing a cell phone’s location information to the major programs used by the 6,300 emergency response departments across the US. RapidSOS offers its integration as a free software update to existing 911 dispatch systems.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/18/technology/apple-911-location/index.html
Technology and Security 