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Daniel Burrus is a New York Times bestselling author, technology futurist, business strategist, speaker on global trends and disruptive innovation.

“Information only becomes powerful if you act on it.”

For our Emergency Service Network, emergency caller location is a powerful piece of data, that when accurate and provided to First Responders, ensures help arrives when it is needed most.

That emergency location information is defined as handset-derived location or dispatchable address…. but what does that mean?

Section 506 of *RAY BAUM’S Act states “dispatchable location” information conveyed during an emergency call would allow First Responders to quickly locate the caller.

Dispatchable location/address includes ALL of the following:

• GPS coordinates, represented as x -axis (latitude) and y-axis (longitude)

• Z-axis (altitude)

• County/State/Province, City/Town, and civic street address

• Most importantly accurate indoor location with useable information such as floor, room or apartment number.

Emergency mobile calls to 112/ 9-1-1 today are not providing a complete dispatchable address. What we get, looks more like the picture on the left, than the more detailed information provided on the right.

Specifically, the indoor multi-storey locations, such as downtown environments, face extreme accuracy challenges…that are still not resolved!

Until we have a “door to knock on”, Responders will continue to struggle locating mobile callers, and lives will continue to be lost.

Dispatchable location is powerful information that will change our emergency system for the better.