Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
Emergency management (EM) activities have long been practiced in civil society. Such activities evolved from simple precautions and scattered procedures into more sophisticated management processes that include preparedness, protection, response, mitigation and recovery strategies (Canton, 2007). In the twentieth century, governments have been utilising technologies such as sirens, speakers, radio, television and internet to communicate and disseminate time-critical information to citizens about impending dangers, during and after hazards. Over the past decade, location-based services (LBS) have been implemented, or considered for implementation, by several countries to geographically deliver warnings, notifications and possibly life-saving information to people (Krishnamurthy, 2002; Weiss et al., 2006; Aloudat et al., 2007; Jagtman, 2010).
LBS take into account the pinpoint geographic position of a given device (handheld, wearable, implantable), and provide the user of the device with value added information based on the derived locational information (Küpper, 2005; Perusco & Michael, 2007). The location information can be obtained by using various indoor and/or outdoor positioning technologies that differ in their range, coverage, precision, target market, purpose and functionality. Radio frequencies, cellular telecommunications networks and global navigation satellite systems are amongst the main access media used to determine the geographic location of a device (Michael, 2004; Perusco & Michael, 2007). The collected location information can be stored for the purpose of further processing (e.g. analysing the whereabouts of a fleet of emergency service vehicles over a period of time) or combined with other relevant information and sent back to the user in a value-added form (e.g. traffic accidents and alternative routes). The user can either initiate a request for the service or it is triggered automatically when the device enters or leaves or comes in the vicinity of a defined geographic area.
The conventional use of LBS in emergency management is to find the almost exact location of a mobile handset after an emergency call or a distress short message service (SMS). Although the accuracy of the positioning results ranges from a few metres up to several kilometres, the current objective by several governments is to regulate the telecommunications carriers to provide the location information within accuracies between 50 to 150 metres. This type of service is generally known as wireless E911 in Northern America (i.e. Canada and the United States), E112 in the European Union, and similarly, but not officially, E000 in Australia.
But, even with proximate levels of accuracy LBS applications have the ability to create much more value when they are utilised under an all-hazards approach by government. For example, with LBS in use, government agencies pertinent to the emergency management portfolio can collaborate with telecommunications carriers in the country to disseminate rapid warnings and relevant safety messages to all active mobile handsets regarding severe weather conditions, an act of terrorism, an impending natural disaster or any other extreme event if it happened or was about to happen in the vicinity of these mobile handsets. For that reason, LBS solutions are critically viewed by different governments around the world as an extremely valuable addition to their arrangements for emergency notification purposes (Aloudat et al., 2007; Jagtman, 2010).