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Comment by bungie4 | Hacker News Reader

I work in 911, Telematics, alarm, PERS space. We are a PSAP (Public Safety Answer Point)

The device might send a Geocode, but reverse geo-coding (turning a long/lat into a human readable place) is a highly inaccurate thing. Secondly, most responders have no means of turning a long/lat into a point on the map, short of using their personal phone. Next, altitude is not factored in. Imagine being in a downtown office building. If nobody is downstairs to guide responders, or if the caller was unable to speak, they will have a really difficult time determining just which building/floor you are in.

Its all gotten much worse with the advent of mobile/VOIP and now, WIFI phone systems where your phone can move. Its a system ill equipped to handle it.

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> reverse geo-coding (turning a long/lat into a human readable place) is a highly inaccurate thing

Why? That sure seems like it should be trivial.

> altitude is not factored in

Why not? GPS can tell you your altitude.

> ”reverse geo-coding, turning a lat/long into a human readable place highly inaccurate ... no means of turning a lat/long into a point on the map”

Three words for you ...

https://what3words.com

That helps with communicating the lat/long, but not with determining where that actually is. With what3words, not only are first responders still required to use some mobile device, but they're also reliant on a proprietary service (read: point of failure).

Exactly.

There should be no point of failure. By using the same hashing algorithm to produce 3 words worldwide, anyone with the same seed could produce coordinates for any words. Or the 3 words for any coordinates.

But navigation systems in an car do work on streetnames and numbers ;)

Not in many parts of the world.

It's just the method for communicating the destination coordinates quickly and accurately. Google Maps can do the actual routing from there.

A public-domain alternative to that would be a Geohash[1]. Instead of 3 words, its a string of letters and numbers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash

Or just state an appropriate S2 cell.

How does this help a responder determine if the location is on the first floor or the 57th?

I was going to suggest this, or a standard like it, too.

Sure, it doesn't help with altitude, although maybe a fourth word could be added for that, and "what floor are you on?" is a simple question to ask and understand the answer to anyways.

If people can be dispatched to a location, getting the altitude a few minutes later is still a good use of time. Not to mention, if you're in a tall building you've also probably got extra coworkers or neighbors to go to the elevator or go to the ground floor to help the responders get to the victim quickly.

Also, phones could be configured to automatically and quickly read the 3 words as soon as they connect to 911 so if they're calling a 911 call center that has not adopted any location technology the information can still be transmitted quickly, accurately and automatically in under 2 seconds to any phone without proprietary software on the receiving end.

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