Google tests forwarding location to emergency center after emergency call

Google is testing a way to communicate the location of an Android phone to the emergency center when the user makes an emergency call. To do this, Google has partnered with RapidSOS and West Corp.

The alternative way of reporting a location to an emergency center is being tested by Google in the United States for the 911 emergency number. Early experiments show that the technology from Google and its partners works better than finding the location based on data that are passed on by cell towers to the emergency center, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Google has tested the technology with a large number of emergency centers in the US states of Texas, Tennessee and Florida, in areas where a total of 2.4 million people live. In the majority of cases, 80 percent, Google’s data was more accurate than cell tower data; the average radius of the user’s location was 37 meters with Google technology, and that of the cell towers on average 159 meters. The data from Google also arrived faster at the emergency centers.

For now, it is still a test in the United States, and it is unclear whether the functionality will be built into Android by default, but the intention is to expand the implementation to the rest of the country. It is also unknown whether Google has plans to apply the technology to the European emergency number 112.