Remember in Thunderbirds where John Tracey would always be looking out for people in distress from his satellite Thunderbird 5 ? He never seemed to have to ask people where they were…
Something I have been working with the Android team on for the last few months is the Emergency Location Service, a feature on android phones that when supported by your network, sends a more accurate location from your phone to emergency services when you dial an emergency number.
To do this same location technologies available to apps on your phone, including Wi-Fi, GPS, and cell towers is used, to produce a more reliable emergency location both indoors and outdoors. Up until now in Europe only cell tower information has been used.
Testing in the UK has produced a order of magnitude improvement in the location accuracy made available to the emergency services.
More details on the Google Europe Blog..
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/helping-emergency-services-find-you.html
If you are in the UK and have an android device this is working for you today !