Traditional 9-1-1 systems, which date back to 1970s, support only voice, while non-emergency communications now feature other media. Adding additional media for 9-1-1 presents opportunities and challenges. Text messages, images captured by cell phones, video clips, and automatic crash notification messages can dramatically enhance the 9-1-1 services by expediting emergency responses and reducing crash clearance times. The rapid increase of residential, nomadic and mobile VoIP usage requires the development of VoIP-based next generation 9-1-1 systems and services that will replace the current circuit-switched 9-1-1 systems. Beyond limitations in media and mobility support, existing systems are inefficient and cannot easily accommodate new functionality. This project is a collaboration among University of North Texas, Columbia University and Texas A&M University, where UNT will be the lead institution, to develop a testbed that will enable research on understanding and analysis of next generation 9-1-1 services. The testbed make possible research and development in reliability, security, function-appropriate privacy and other areas that already difficult in large scale VoIP, but which become daunting when the VoIP system is critical infrastructure.
The broader impacts of this project are many. A testbed for Internet-based 9-1-1 research is particularly important as both state and federal governments are in the process of planning next-generation emergency communication platforms, unfortunately often without adequate vendor-neutral testing and evaluation. Users of the testbed will investigate issues related to locating 9-1-1 callers, securing Public Safety Answering Points, ensuring continuous availability of 9-1-1 services during large-scale emergencies, predicting emergencies, providing citizen alerts ("reverse 9-1-1"), and improving inter-agency coordination. The PIs expect to translate results from research on this infrastructure to engineering guidelines and disseminate results across government organizations, standards bodies such as IETF and National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and 9-1-1 centers. Moreover, the findings from the experiments in this project will be useful for the residents across USA.
Next Generation 9-1-1 Services University of North Texas Network Security Lab Location Dection in Highrise Buildings Cuurently it is very difficult to find the location of a person in a highrise building using GPS. We innovated magnetic map of buildings using multiple sensors in a smart phone. These maps are created while people walking in the building with a mobile phone. No additional equipment is required. There onwards, these maps are used for identifying the location. We are able to detect the location within 2 meters. Vital Sign Measurements Smartphones have many sensors that can be used to gather data for emergency dispatchers, such as motion sensors, cameras, and microphones. Using such data from smartphone sensors, we can measure vital signs such as pulse, blood pressure, and breathing rate, and improve the quality of execution of lifesaving emergency procedures. With these always accessible devices, the general public can monitor and get feedback on their vital signs, and be confident in their ability to respond in emergency situation. This work resulted in Barsanti award for creativity and innovation. Next Generation 9-1-1 Protocols 9-1-1 dispatchers have several sets of Emergency Medical Dispatch (EMD) protocols that they use when taking calls. We have created modifications to some of these dispatch protocols that take smartphone sensor data into account. For example, one could use audio and video from the smartphone to assess a patient’s alertness, and to identify medications and other substances that a patient may have ingested recently. Our modified Overdose/Poison Ingestion protocol could be completed up to 50% faster than the original version. The modified protocol also resulted in substantial improvements in accuracy. CPR Monitor We created a CPR monitoring application that uses a smartphone’s motion sensors to measure the depth and rate of CPR compressions. CPR depth, rate, and recoil data are transmitted to NG9-1-1 dispatchers via a secured web portal. In the portal, dispatchers can view plots of the data, view a map with the user’s location, and print reports on CPR quality. This application implements the research backing the American Heart Association Resuscitation Quality Improvement program to preserve best practices while keeping CPR accessible to the general public. Blood Pressure Monitor We created a blood pressure monitoring application that uses a smartphone’s camera to monitor a person’s pulse, and an external stethoscope microphone to listen to the "lub" and "dub" sounds of a person’s heartbeat. Data from these sources are processed on the smartphone in real time to provide accurate, real-time blood pressure estimates. The application can be calibrated to an individual to improve accuracy over time. Detection of Heart Sounds We have used previous recordings of normal heart sounds, heart murmurs, and extra heart sounds to train smartphones to recognize these types of heart sounds. Using our application, smartphones can detect these types of heart sounds in real time with 92% accuracy. A doctoral student in the UNT Network Security Lab, won the US-India Chamber of Commerce’s annual Spirit of Innovation competition for her work in identifying heart sounds with smartphones.
