How Mobile Apps Are Revolutionizing Public Safety

Written by KOVA Corp

For whatever reason, public safety agencies - at least, on the city and county level - have traditionally lagged behind other industries when it comes to adopting the latest and greatest in technology.

That’s beginning to change, slowly. Some cities are investing in cutting-edge technology like Smart Streetlights and situational awareness platforms, and crowdsourcing public safety information from citizens.

And slowly but surely, mobile apps designed to enhance public safety are emerging, too. Let’s take a look at two mobile apps that are helping both law enforcement and everyday citizens.

SilentPartner

KOVA developed our mobile recording app, SilentPartner, in order to help public safety officials gather the information they need more easily when they’re out in the field.

SilentPartner, which works on both iOS and Android systems, turns your smartphone into a secure recording device. With SilentPartner, detectives, police officers, and others can use their phone as a portable recorder to do interviews, for example, or record their own voice notes at the scene of an incident.

Those recordings can then be securely transmitted to headquarters for safekeeping.

SilentPartner can also record all or select phone calls, as well as capture data like GPS location at the time of the call, caller ID, and dialed digits. The app includes optional Speech Analytics, which can analyze your calls to identify trends that emerge between calls that may initially seem to be unrelated.

Finally, SilentPartner can capture texts, photos, and video on scene as well, giving you the capability to capture more information or evidence. In turn, this can help you and your agency close cases faster.

And the app isn’t just for public safety officials. Anyone who frequently works away from the office and needs to capture information - health inspectors, insurance claims adjusters, and others - will find SilentPartner extremely useful.

Enhancing 911 Service

It’s no secret that our 911 system is in need of some serious updating. Developed in the 1960s, the 911 system that exists in most counties today is still stuck in the era of landlines and analog technology.

This means that the vast majority of 911 centers are unable to receive texts, photos, or videos, and even, in many cases, to accurately locate cell phone calls.

Next Generation 911 (or NG-911) standards call for every 911 center in the U.S. to upgrade to digital technology, but adoption has been slow. This is one area in which KOVA is working - we offer Audiolog for Public Safety, for example, which is an ideal platform for centers upgrading to NG-911 standards.

We’re not the only ones working on this problem, however. According to a Smithsonian article, a Harvard business school student named Michael Martin has teamed up with an MIT nuclear engineer named Nick Horelik to create a mobile app called RapidSOS that is helping link cell phones with 911 services more reliably.

Martin came up with the idea after his father fell off a ladder at his rural Indiana home one winter. His father broke a leg and wrist, and although he had his cell phone, he was unable to reach 911 because of spotty service. The result was that he lay in his driveway for two hours with broken bones until his wife came home and was able to reach 911 from a landline.

To help people avoid these kinds of situations in the future, Martin developed RapidSOS to connect cell users to 911 via a single touch. Users who need emergency assistance can open RapidSOS and touch a button for the kind of assistance they need: Fire, Medical, Police, or Car Crash.

The system then transmits this information along with the phone’s precise location to the nearest 911 center. In addition, the phone connects users by voice to a dispatcher, and allows for the sending of text messages, medical history, and demographic data, as well as video in certain areas. The app even alerts designated emergency contacts when you contact emergency services.

Apps like RapidSOS and SilentPartner are helping to revolutionize the way public safety agencies work. If you’re interested in learning more about SilentPartner, or how KOVA can help you upgrade your public safety agency, contact us today!

Is Your Organization Ready to Optimize their Public Safety Systems?

eyeusers