Google starts emergency location service in India
Google recently announced the launch of its Emergency Location Service (ELS) in India for compatible Android smartphones. It means that users who are in an emergency can call or contact emergency service providers like police, firefighters, and healthcare professionals. ELS can share the user's accurate location immediately.
Uttar Pradesh (UP) in India has become the first state to operationalise ELS for Android devices. Earlier, ELS was rolled out to devices having Android 6 or newer versions. For integration, however, ELS will require state authorities to connect it with their services for activation.
More about ELS
According to Google, the ELS function on Android handsets has been activated in India. The built-in emergency service will enable Android users to communicate their location by call or SMS in order to receive assistance from emergency service providers, such as firefighters, police, and medical personnel.
ELS on Android collects information from the device's GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular networks in order to pinpoint the user's exact location, with an accuracy of up to 50 meters.
Implementation details
However, local wireless and emergency infrastructure operators must enable support for the ELS capability. The first state in India to "fully" operationalize the service for Android devices is Uttar Pradesh.
ELS assistance has been integrated with the emergency number 112 by the state police in partnership with Pert Telecom Solutions. It is a free service that solely monitors a user's position when an Android phone dials 112.
Google added that all suitable handsets running Android 6.0 and later versions now have access to the ELS functionality.
Even if a call is dropped within seconds of being answered, the business claims that ELS in Android has enabled over 20 million calls and SMS messages to date. ELS is supported by Android Fused Location Provider- Google's machine learning tool.
Promising safety?
According to Google, the feature is only available to emergency service providers and it will never collect or share accurate location data for itself. The ELS data will be sent directly only to the concerned authority.
Recently, Google also launched the Emergency Live Video feature for Android devices. It lets users share their camera feed during an emergency via a call or SMS with the responder. But the emergency service provider has to get user approval for the access. The feature is shown on screen immediately when the responder requests a video from their side. User can accept the request and provide a visual feed or reject the request.
