A new emergency tracker that could provide centimetre location accuracy for mobile phone calls to 000 is being tested by Queensland utility Ergon Energy.
The tracker requires small, portable GPS base stations to be mounted on poles, but also requires mobile phones to have a new chip installed in them.
Ergon Eneregy will purchase 1,000 of the base stations over the next 12 to 18 months to cover about 97 percent of Queensland, reports The Australian.
These new stations will work within the state’s existing Continuously Operating Reference Stations network, which records, distributes and archives satellite data, and will provide mobile phones with centimetre-accurate, real-time location data for a range of different applications – not just 000 calls.
The Ergon-led project, known as ROAMES or Remote Observation Automated Modelling Economic Simulation, involves several parties including Google, the state government, Queensland University of Technology, Seabird Aviation and the Co-operative Research Centre for Spatial Information.
Unfortunately, the program is not without its stumbling blocks. With handsets requiring a new chip to access this centimetre-accuracy location data, it is possible that handset manufacturers won’t see eye-to-eye with the location providers, although Ergon has held preliminary talks with handset manufacturers Nokia and Samsung.
Also, consumers will have to foot the bill of the extra infrastructure having to be installed, with telcos potentially offering subscriptions or add-on packages for real-time location features. As lower-accuracy location features (down to a few metres) are currently free on existing mobile phones with GPS chips installed, it may be hard to make the consumer see the value in paying for the extra charges.
However, Ergon Energy’s Matthew Coleman said governments may choose to mandate that every mobile phone plan offered real-time positioning services, due to the safety benefits it could offer during calls to 000 services.
One final stumbling block involves a problem on another scale altogether; increasing the accuracy of the state’s cadastral database.
"At the moment there's no point having a GPS that can get you to two centimetres positioning when people are building and maintaining their infrastructure relevant to cadastral, which could be out by as much as 600 metres," Mr Coleman told The Australian.
"It's getting the underlying land database (cadastral) to the level of accuracy that's required. That then allows us to position our assets to the level of accuracy needed.
"Once you've got those two, it enables you to – in times of emergency response – be able to accurately route emergency services to a customer or to an asset."
