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Sat, Mar 29, 2003 - Austin American Statesman -"Cell phone 911 technology tested to aid in finding Central Texans".

By Camille Wheeler
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Can you see me now? Good.

Thanks to technology designed to revolutionize the 911 wireless world, cell phone users might soon be uttering those words.

This week, Central Texas emergency specialists launched at least three weeks of testing, hoping to demonstrate that a signal from a cell phone equipped with a Global Positioning System chip can save lives.

How? The cell phone sends a signal to a satellite, producing latitude and longitude coordinates. Then a digital map, with a glowing dot pinpointing the caller's location within 164 feet, pops up on a 911 dispatcher's screen.

The technology exceeds by far the Federal Communications Commission's requirement that wireless service providers give 911 operators a caller's location to within 410 feet for two of every three calls.

"When it's online, that data will be a quantum leap," said Richard Kelly, director of regional planning for the Austin-based Capital Area Planning Council, which is coordinating the testing across its 10-county region.

Cell phones must have GPS chips, however, for the system to work. And all emergency call-taking locations, urban and rural, must have the proper infrastructure and training in place.

Sprint, which introduced the nation's first GPS-enabled cell phone in 2001, will provide the phones for the council's testing. The GPS-equipped phones, which typically include other amenities such as embedded cameras, start at $150.

For someone stranded in the middle of nowhere -- say a mountain biker who has plunged over a cliff into dense foliage and is severely injured -- a 911 cell phone call could be placed with confidence. "We're going to be able to pinpoint those suckers," Kelly said.

Bruce Barr, the council's geographic information systems technician, predicts that all cell phones someday will talk to satellites, just like the one that he sometimes carries: "I'm a firm believer that's where it's going and where it needs to go."

Finding the money to bring the technology to Central Texas, however, might be difficult. Becky Stewart, the council's emergency services director, said she could not predict when the system may be in use for the rest of the region, because funding is not in place.

The council originally asked the Legislature for $16 million to replace most of the 911 answering equipment across the area by 2006. But the council cut its request in half in light of the current state budget crisis and now hopes to upgrade 911 equipment at the region's 34 emergency call taking centers by 2008. Emergency officials also are asking the Texas Legislature to release $1.5 million in 911 surcharges to help update answering equipment.

The new 911 technology -- already online in the Houston area -- ultimately would cover 8,563 square miles in Central Texas. Area cities and counties would share the cost of the system, which will go online in stages. The council is spending $2.1 million to install 911 answering equipment at a new combined communications center that will serve Austin and Travis County, Stewart said.

Additionally, the Austin City Council voted last week to spend $2.5 million to upgrade emergency communications systems in Austin. The planning council, and area cities and counties, hired a Colorado company for nearly $3 million to take aerial photographs of the region last year. Those highly detailed, color photographs will provide updated digital maps for 911 operators, other emergency workers and local governments for issues including planning, transportation, water and community development.

The maps, combined with satellite technology, also would prove valuable to emergency workers searching for victims of a terrorist attack or natural disaster, said Gordon Wells, a NASA scientist at the University of Texas Center for Space Research and a member of the governor's emergency management council.

Wells provided satellite-based digital maps for the Columbia space shuttle debris search in East Texas. Searchers carried GPS search devices, accurate to within 2 feet, which allowed radio operators to relay coordinates and trace search patterns in real time. Those devices are more sophisticated than the technology the planning council will test.
"The (debris) distribution is similar in many ways to what you would experience if there were a dispersal of a chemical agent in the air or an airborne explosion of a dirty bomb," Wells said.

James Judge, geographic information systems mapping supervisor for the Austin Police Department, is optimistic that the new technology for the region will be as effective as a Texas-sized pair of binoculars.
Judge is anxious to see what happens when a dispatcher receives a test call from a nearby location, such as the corner of Sixth Street and Lamar Boulevard.

"Is (the digital map) going to say I'm on that corner or 100 feet away? How close can we get? That's the answer we don't have," said Judge, who oversees Travis County's emergency mapping system.

"But we think it's going to be pretty close."

cwheeler@statesman.com; 246-0008