Emergency+App

Sounds very useful Michelle.

From this Government site it states .... "displays the GPS coordinates of the phone's location that the caller can read out to the emergency operator."

So it would seem that it does not transmit the coordinate data.

I installed it. It displays your position which you then have to give to the operator. There are three buttons on the screen, one to call 000, one for SES and one for Police. Obviously I cannot make test calls to confirm this, but I assume that when you do call one of those your position will remain displayed.

It's a great idea, but there are a few caveats

1) If your GPS is not on it gets its position from triangulating phone towers. That is a very approximate position; on my test from my home it was 1.5km out. However, about 20 seconds after I selected GPS on, it reported my position exactly. In either case, as well as reporting coordinates it also reports an address.

My experience in talking with my non-technical friends and family is that many think that because their phone knows their approximate position they think GPS is on, when in fact it may not be. I think there's a potential problem there.

2) If you want it accurate all the time, having the GPS on continuously will reduce battery life.

3) The displayed lat/long is in quite small font. There is room on the screen to make it bigger, and I think that should be taken advantage of to assist those with poor eyesight and anyone under stress.

Having been in an emergency situation (in the line of fire from illegal shooters in a nat. park) and being asked for my location, this app would have been very handy.

It's a great idea, just realise its limitations.

Cheers

Michelle, for what its worth here are my ideas as to should ExplorOz promote this app.

For people who only travel on the tar it is probably a handy tool. For those who hit the dirt, which is probably most people who visit this site, I would not be promoting this product. When going remote you should have your emergency communications that are as close to 100% reliable as possible. As a minimum I would suggest that this is a satellite phone and a GPS enabled PLB. This is not a huge expense these days and is very simple and easy to understand and easily promoted. Many of us have additional
devices such as HF radio, Spot trackers etc which add another layer of safety but also perform other functions. This app will simply not work in all the places that one would expect many users of ExplorOz would go, so to promote it with conditions is open to misunderstanding. I would certainly encourage everybody to load this app on their smartphone, after all you can never have to many bullets in the armoury, but we need to be clear it is in the second line of defence not the front line.

The simple reality is that if you activate your GPS enabled PLB and provided you have registered your satellite phone number with AMSA where you register your PLB, you can expect a call on your satellite phone in a short period of time and it does not matter where you are. Even if your phone fails, or for what ever reason cannot be used, your exact position, and the fact you need urgent help is known. What the satellite phone does is that in many circumstances the help required is not "urgent" and arrangements can be made with phone calls without setting of the PLB. If it is "urgent", then after you have activated your PLB, the satellite phone enables you to let the authorities know what help is required and you receive feedback as to what to do until help arrives and when that help will arrive. (Peace of mind). On ExplorOz there is a wealth of information on this subject but it would take a bit to wade through and understand. Most Australians would have a fair idea of what remote means, but to someone from overseas remote may mean more than 100 kilometre from a McDonald's.

Michelle you ask should the emergency app be promoted, my suggestion would be to highlight more prominently the benefits of the PLB satphone combo.

Well worded, thoughtful post, Chris.

Remote certainly means different things to many people! Watching the Channel 7 coverage of the recent, tragic gas explosion in Ravenshoe Qld. The young reporter used the term "remote" to describe the township of Ravenshoe, a mere 1.5-2 hours from Cairns!

Always thought remote meant somewhere that had no mobile phone service, dirt roads, no Woolies or Coles and all medical services were provided by the RFDS. Maybe I was wrong?

Bob

We are all assuming here that in any emergency that the GPS position is the first thing people would want to know, - not so. In Aug last year while in the Gammon Ranges I inadvertently triggered the HELP button on my Spot device which sent a message to my daughter that I need help. She was able to get onto the local Ranger but when she mentioned my GPS position he said he had no GPS equipment and to just describe where I was. When he did turn up I was wondering why this vehicle was driving up and down the track, at night, and in pouring rain. I was camped about 200 metre off the track and if I was somehow incapacitated and had not gone down to road to investigate I might still be there now in a rather smelly condition. Three months later I was marooned by rain in the Great Victorian Desert just north of Zanthus on the Trans railway line in WA. On calling the Kalgoorlie police to advise them of my situating and that I was fine with ample supplies, they did not want my GPS position as it "meant nothing to them" they want a description of my location so I gave them about 7 kilometres north of Zanthus on the track to Cundeelee.
Now if you are on a track I suppose you will be fairly quickly found. But what happens if you have gone to collect firewood, or just exploring, and you had a stroke and could not move. Without a GPS position it could take sometime to find you and could even be the difference between life and death.
Hopefully this will change over time. The solution right now is to train a family member or friend who is the first point of contact by the emergency services to understand a GPS position and how to be able to describe to anyone exactly where you are. In my case it is my daughter who would fire up Oziexplorer on my home computer and she has all the maps in the world. If not at home uses Google Earth.