Publication

Abstract : M-Urgency is a public safety system that (1) redefines how emergency calls are made to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) like the 911 system and (2) is designed to be context-aware of the situation in which it is used. M-Urgency enables mobile users to stream live audio and video from their devices to local PSAP along with the audio stream, the real time location and the relevant context information, enabling appropriate and prompt service. This paper presents a new feature, incorporated in M-Urgency, that enables social contribution whereby users in the vicinity of an emergency event can help operation conducted by the emergency personnel through verbal/visual information useful to them or by providing assistance. Our experiments show a very positive response from the participant to the capabilities of our system. In this paper, we also discuss the social implications such as privacy and security for this system.