Showing posts with label Emergency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emergency. Show all posts

Wednesday 27 May 2009

Service Specific Access Control (SSAC) in 3GPP Release 9


In an emergency situation, like Earthquake or Tsunami, degradation of quality of service may be experienced. Degradation in service availability and performance can be accepted in such situations, but mechanisms are desirable to minimize such degradation and maximize the efficiency of the remaining resources.

When Domain Specific Access Control (DSAC) mechanism was introduced for UMTS, the original motivation was to enable PS service continuation during congestion in CS Nodes in the case of major disaster like an Earthquake or a Tsunami.

In fact, the use case of DSAC in real UMTS deployment situation has been to apply access control separately on different types of services, such as voice and other packet-switched services.

For example, people’s psychological behaviour is to make a voice call in emergency situations and it is not likely to change. Hence, a mechanism will be needed to separately restrict voice calls and other services.

As EPS is a PS-Domain only system, DSAC access control does not apply.

The SSAC Technical Report (see Reference) identifies specific features useful when the network is subjected to decreased capacity and functionality. Considering the characteristics of voice and non-voice calls in EPS, requirements of the SSAC could be to restrict the voice calls and non-voice calls separately.

For a normal paid service there are QoS requirements. The provider can choose to shut down the service if the requirements cannot be met. In an emergency situation the most important thing is to keep communication channels uninterrupted, therefore the provider should preferably allow for a best effort (degradation of) service in preference to shutting the service down. During an emergency situation there should be a possibility for the service provider also to grant services, give extended credit to subscribers with accounts running empty. Under some circumstances (e.g. the terrorist attack in London on the 7 of July in 2005), overload access control may be invoked giving access only to authorities or a predefined set of users. It is up to national authorities to define and implement such schemes.

Reference: 3GPP TR 22.986 - Study on Service Specific Access Control

Tuesday 26 May 2009

Public Warning System (PWS) in Release-9

Public Warning System (PWS) is generalization of Earthquake and Tsunami Warning System (ETWS). The requirements for PWS has been defined in 3GPP Release 9 in 3GPP TS 22.268. 3GPP TR 22.968 details the Study for requirements for a Public Warning System (PWS) service.

The following list gives the high level general requirements for Warning Notification delivery:

- PWS shall be able to broadcast Warning Notifications to multiple users simultaneously with no acknowledgement required.
- Warning Notifications shall be broadcast to a Notification Area which is based on the geographical information as specified by the Warning Notification Provider.
- PWS capable UEs (PWS-UE) in idle mode shall be capable of receiving broadcasted Warning Notifications.
- PWS shall only be required to broadcast Warning Notifications in languages as prescribed by regulatory requirements.
- Warning Notifications are processed by PWS on a first in, first out basis, subject to regulatory requirements.
- Reception and presentation of Warning Notifications to the user shall not pre-empt an active voice or data session.
- Warning Notifications shall be limited to those emergencies where life or property is at imminent risk, and some responsive action should be taken.



Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) is Public Warning System (PWS) that delivers Warning Notifications provided by Warning Notification Providers to CMAS capable PWS-UEs. CMAS defines three different classes of Warning Notifications (Presidential, Imminent Threat and Child Abduction Emergency). The CMAS functionality does not require modifications to the 3GPP-defined cell broadcast functionality.

Sunday 24 May 2009

eCall to save lives

Qualcomm is offering its endorsement for the Third Generation Partnership Project’s (3GPP’s) recent approval of the eCall in-band modem specification, which supports the European Union’s eCall road safety initiative.

The 3GPP standardization group has approved the final specs of the eCall in-band modem standard. The specification work was undertaken by 3GPP at the request of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the European Commission, which sought a standardized technical solution to support the deployment of eCall across Europe. With the completion of this work, ETSI has adopted the 3GPP specifications and will publish them as ETSI standards.

The eCall public road safety initiative is designed to provide rapid assistance to motorists involved in a collision anywhere in the European Union by automatically generating an emergency voice call via the cellular network to local emergency agencies, as well as sending information such as position location. ECall, which is scheduled for introduction and operation across Europe in late 2010, is expected to help save lives by improving notification of road accidents and speeding up emergency service response.

The eCall Memorandum of Understanding (eCall MoU) got the backing of Estonia. The country thereby commits itself to the timely implementation of eCall, the pan-European emergency call system. eCall enables a car involved in a serious crash to automatically dial 112 and call the nearest emergency centre. In the call, it notifies the accident and transmits its exact location. Jüri Pihl, Estonian Minister of the Interior, signed the eCall MoU in the presence of Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for the Information Society and Media. Estonia is the 15th EU Member State to sign the MoU.

The pan-European in-vehicle emergency call system, "eCall", is a device in the car that uses 112, the single European emergency number, to automatically call the nearest emergency centre in the event of a serious traffic accident. In the call the exact location of the accident scene is transmitted to the centre, even is there is no voice connection, because, for example, all passengers have lost consciousness. Knowledge of the exact location of the crash reduces response time of the rescue teams by 40 % in built-up areas and 50 % in rural environments. 2.500 lives could be saved in the European Union annually, and 15 % of serious injuries mitigated, if all European cars were equipped with eCall. Other EU Member States that have signed the MoU so far are: Austria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Spain and The Netherlands. Non-EU States Iceland, Norway and Switzerland belong to the signatories as well.

Watch this Video to understand all about eCall



eCall, Initially designed to fulfil European requirements, the eCall feature will:
  • Enable the automated delivery of 140 bytes of information in astandardised format to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP)
  • Complete that delivery with 4 seconds
  • Provide accurate location information
The introduction of this feature will dramatically reduce the time taken for emergency assistance to arrive at the scene of an accident and hence help to save lives

For more information see:
3GPP TR 22.967
3GPP TS 22.105
3GPP TS 24.008
http://www.ertico.com/
Reference: Adrian Scrase Presentation in LTE World Summit

Friday 3 April 2009

More on ICE

Continuing from the earlier post on ICE, Martin Sauter has some more information on this topic:

During the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year, I heard from Adrian Scrase for the first time that 3GPP has specified how to put information on the SIM card for "In Case of Emergency" (ICE) events, i.e. to help first responders to identify someone and to contact their next of kin.

A great idea and now that it is specified it will hopefully become a worldwide accepted feature. It's not in current phones and SIM cards yet so it will take a couple of years for the feature to be added. Let's keep our fingers crossed a critical mass is reached so people actually enter information and first responders actually use the feature.

As somebody asked me over at Forum Oxford at how it will work in practice, I've had a look at the standards:
  • The user enters ICE information like names of persons, relation to these persons and phone numbers. For details see 3GPP TS 22.101, A28
  • During an emergency, the information can be retrieved by pressing '* * *'. That's specified in 3GPP TS 22.030, 6.8
  • The information is stored in a new file on the SIM card referred to as EF(ICE_DN) and the format is described in 3GPP TS 31.102

Wednesday 1 April 2009

ICE: In case of emergency


In case of emergency (ICE) is a program that enables first responders, such as paramedics, firefighters, and police officers, to identify victims and contact their next of kin to obtain important medical information. The program was conceived in the mid-2000s and promoted by British paramedic Bob Brotchie in May 2005. It encourages people to enter emergency contacts in their cell phone address book under the name "ICE". Alternately, a person can list multiple emergency contacts as "ICE1", "ICE2", etc. The popularity of the program has spread across Europe and Australia, and has started to grow into North America.

Wednesday 21 January 2009

3GPP Earthquake and Tsunami Warning service (ETWS)



Earthquake and Tsunami Warning Service: is a service that delivers Earthquake and Tsunami Warning Notifications provided by Warning Notification Providers to the UEs which have the capability of receiving Warning Notifications within Notification Areas through the 3GPP network.

Earthquake and Tsunami Warning System: is a subsystem of Public Warning System that delivers Warning Notifications specific to Earthquake and Tsunami provided by Warning Notification Providers to the UEs which have the capability of receiving Warning Notifications within Notification Areas through the 3GPP network.

Earthquake and Tsunami Warning service is provided to users by PLMN operators. Warning Notification Providers produce Warning Notification to PLMN operator when an event occurs e.g. an Earthquake. PLMN operators distribute Warning Notifications to users by utilizing ETWS.

The ETWS consists of the PLMN that is capable to deliver Warning Notification and the UEs that are capable to receive Warning Notification. A Warning Notification Provider is able to send Warning Notification to the users in Notification Area by activating ETWS. Warning Notification is classified into two types depending on the purpose and urgency of the notification.

The first type of Notification is called Primary Notification. This type of notification delivers the most important information of the threat that is approaching to users (e.g. the imminent occurrence of Earthquake or Tsunami). The notification shall be delivered to the users as soon as possible.

The second type of Notification is called Secondary Notification. This type of notification delivers additional information, such as instructions on what to do / where to get help as long as the emergency lasts.

More Information at 3GPP TS 22.168: Earthquake and Tsunami Warning System (ETWS) requirements; Stage 1.

You may also find interesting this FAQ for Cell Broadcast (CB) in Public Warning.

Monday 19 January 2009

MMS of NY Plane Crash, first photo on the web

A dramatic picture of the US Airways aircraft that crashed in the Hudson River appeared around the world within minutes after a bystander uploaded a photograph taken with his mobile telephone on to the website Twitter.

In another illustration of the growing power of Twitter, where users post mini-messages, Janis Krums took the picture with his iPhone and sent it to the site.

Mr Krums, from Sarasota, Florida, posted: “There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.”

Read complete article here.