Google launches emergency service

TORONTO • Next time Android users in Canada make a 911 call, a new service embedded in their phones will transmit their location to emergency responders.

Google announced the debut of Android's Emergency Location Service in Canada on Monday, saying its goal is to reduce response times by helping emergency personnel locate people in need quicker.

“This is such a critical service to users because so often a call-taker wouldn't have gotten the location they needed to quickly and easily dispatch that help, so this is ... a huge help to Canadian folks who are calling emergency services,” said Boone Spooner, a group product manager for Android safety at Google.

The service's Canadian launch comes as the telecommunications industry, its regulator and tech companies are working toward overhauling aging emergency systems so they're capable of collecting more information in a broader range of formats from Canadians in distress.

Their aim is to transform the systems from analog to digital so the country can offer next-generation 911 services, which could eventually see first responders receive text messages, medical information or even videos of emergency incidents.

The Emergency Location Service's origins date back to 2018, said Spooner.

“A developer on Android had an emergency and realized that the dispatcher didn't know where she was,” he said. “She thought, there must be a way that I can solve this problem.”

At the time, 911 services were able to locate callers either through landline technology or by asking someone where they were, a question that sometimes wasn't easy to answer.

“Maybe they didn't know where they were or any landmarks in order to get that help sent to them,” Spooner said.

The service reduces such issues because it relies on a combination of Wi-Fi, GPS and cell towers to pinpoint where a caller is.

“The call-taker will see a blue dot similar to what you would see on Google maps and that dot is the XY co-ordinates of the location of the user placing their phone call from,” said Spooner.

“A dispatcher can then determine based on that blue dot or that location, the cross streets or the building that that user is in.”

Elevation information is also transmitted, so a dispatcher might be able to get a rough idea of what floor a caller is on, if they are inside.

The service only gets activated when 911 is called and because the feature will only be used by emergency service providers, Google says it will never see nor handle users' locations. Android users can opt out of the service, Spooner added.

Google estimates the free service will be available on 99.9 per cent of Android phones that are version 5 or newer.