This is how 112 determines your location: there may be a longer wait for help for various reasons

Based on Hollywood movies

“Sometimes people report events, in a place where they can’t say anything, people don’t know or understand how they got there,” says Darius. One of the reasons, according to the interlocutor, is that people have lived at the same address for many years, but until the dramatic event that requires their help, they do not know the exact address of their home.

“For example, they lived in a garden community and don’t know that that garden community already has a specific address, a specific street, and a house number. There are cases when people expect local officials to know objects that existed 10 years ago. “Age 15. For example: in the old butcher shop you have to turn right, drive two kilometers, etc.”, says Darius.

According to BPC deputy director Tad Maroschik, Hollywood movies have created a misconception about how BPC sees the caller’s whereabouts.

BPC has received a lot of criticism since 2013. September 21 A 17-year-old girl was raped by two residents of the Panevėžys district, and in an attempt to cover up the crime, the girl was locked in the trunk of a car and burned alive.

The girl called the helpline several times and begged for help, but no one was able to give her, BPC could not see the girl’s whereabouts. When asked what lessons were learned after this painful event, T, Maroščikas replies that it was an extremely painful event that he will hardly forget. “It just came to our attention then. Everyone imagined, especially those politicians who are using that wave that you (BPC – Delphi) You should always see here why you don’t see that place. They are based on Hollywood movies. That wave passed, but the main problem was that the girl was calling from the device without a SIM card. As far as I can remember, the experience did not say whether or not there was a SIM card in the phone because an entire piece of the phone remained. But at that time, we did not receive information from the two networks when we called without a SIM card. It is a fact. By the way, the call was only on those networks and it left.

The next thing is, would the information we have received help us find it? The cameraman heard what the girl said. The main problem was that he initially wanted to drown her, but his plans changed and she told me where she was going based on what she had heard. But they took her to another place and set her on fire. We were looking for a body of water, ”says T. Maroščikas.

After the incident, the caller says, the location information of the caller receiving PCBs from the neighborhoods where the heinous crime took place was reviewed. According to T. Maroščik, operators could see a radius of 4 to 20 kilometers. After this painful event, says T. Maroščikas, all operators have installed systems that also display the location of the caller without a SIM card.

How to determine the location

According to the BPC representatives, if a person does not know their exact location, otherwise the BPC operators know the exact location of the caller only when the 112 number is called from a landline phone, because it is registered in an address specific.

Neither BPC nor other emergency call centers determine the caller’s whereabouts. The approximate location is determined and transmitted by mobile operators based on the phone connection to the mobile base station (tower). Therefore, the accuracy of the location depends largely on the technical capabilities of mobile operators.

According to BPC representatives, since the beginning of 2017, the corresponding changes have been implemented in the networks of Lithuanian mobile operators. Used in Lithuania Advance time / round trip time method, where the location (area) of the caller is determined not only by the telephone connection to the mobile base station (tower), the area of ​​the coverage sector and address of that station, but also by the propagation time of the radio signal. Compared to the method used until 2017, the caller’s area of ​​presence has decreased more than 10-fold (from an average of 171 square kilometers to 10-15 square kilometers). These data are received immediately with the call.

Around the same time, Google and Apple developed and began implementing the most advanced positioning system available today. When 112 is called from a smartphone with an updated Android or iOS operating system, the phone determines its location based on radio signals from GPS, Wi-Fi or mobile transmitters and automatically sends its coordinates to the number through an encrypted SMS technical message. 112. This method is called AML.

“It just came to our attention then. I want to emphasize that we don’t see the place, we don’t get on the phone. Both the phone and the network can send the information. The network information comes in 2 seconds. The phone needs to think.” information comes from Android phones in about 20 seconds and from Apple phones in about 15 seconds, “says Maroščik.

The introduction of AML, says T. Maroščikas, has paid off. Here’s a disaster in 2017 that ended happily and surrounded all the media. “The father of a 7-year-old boy passed out. The boy called 112, did not know the address because he had recently moved to a new house. The boy panicked, but the phone showed the location with an accuracy of 6 meters. We were able to react quickly. Otherwise, there would have been a 14 kilometer circle where I would have had to look for them, “says T. Maroščikas.

Time to buy a new phone.

And although the current positioning system used in Lithuania is better than in other European countries, it still has its drawbacks. T. Maroščikas says that one of the disadvantages is when the information does not come from a mobile phone, the location of which is determined using the AML system and satellite data, but comes from the operator network. “Then there is a location bar with a width of 2 square kilometers. It covers several towns, several rivers, a main road. You may be calling from a smartphone. Still, the main source of information is man. If you don’t know the address, then realistically, we should look for it in an area of ​​a few square kilometers, “says T. Maroščikas.

However, he adds, there are no addresses in the forest. During the mushroom season, says T. Maroščikas, the number of people lost in the forests also increases. According to the interviewee, in 2018, 400 calls were received about people lost in the forest in a month. T. Maroščikas advises people to invest in a smartphone: you don’t need an expensive phone, one that costs 100 euros will work. “3-year-old phones now have AML functionality,” says Maroščikas. With an AML-enabled phone, you can be sure that you will always receive help, as operators will see your location more accurately.

However, BPC cautions that you need to purchase a phone with Android or iOs operating system, otherwise you will not be able to use your location.

According to Darius, the system used by BPC can display a person’s location with an accuracy of even a few meters in radius. “If it’s an inconvenient time, telecommunications outages, the location can be shown even within a radius of several kilometers.

Mistakes made by callers

When asked what the most common mistakes people make at BPCs and thus complicate the work of BPC operators, Darius says that callers vaguely imagine that BPC can see their location perfectly. “They imagine that we see within a radius of a few meters exactly where they are and the question of what their address is is basically meaningless. They often think that we see their address exactly. Almost that with their call should come and information: name, Last name, residential address, spouse, partner, blood type and the like This is not the case Here is one of the errors.

And another mistake, according to Darius, is that people waste time thinking they have a better understanding of how to deal with a particular problem.

“And because they imagine that they have a better understanding of the solutions, they begin to propose solutions that, in principle, are not acceptable to us.

For example, a person calls and just wants to call an ambulance, and during a conversation with him, it turns out that there was some kind of domestic conflict, violence was used, there are some injuries. However, the person categorically refuses to answer our questions, which would be important in answering the police. Because he wants an ambulance, although obviously, based on what he is saying, it is obvious that he will need not only the ambulance, but also the police, ”says Darius.

According to Darius, this problem is not limited to cases of domestic violence. “It is probably closely related to the fact that people often do not understand where they are calling. If we were to listen (and here I impose out of sight) 100 calls to 112, it would certainly be a few calls with the first words of the caller: is it the ambulance here or the police here? It seems that the caller does not know where he is calling, “says the interlocutor.

Helped Lithuanian Swedish

T. Maroščikas agreed to show that PCB operators see on their screens. During the interview, a call was received: two suspicious men are standing next to the Opel Astra. The operator enters the data immediately and the location of the caller is only visible on the screen with an error of 4 meters. This is because the person is calling from a phone that has AML functionality. The person’s location was determined using GPS or Galileo satellite data.

Darius, for his part, emphasizes that even the best location data loses its meaning if a person seeks help from someone who is in the same place. “It happens that panicked people, especially the elderly or the sick, do not call us first, but their loved ones. Family members can be in a completely different city, without even knowing the exact address. We will benefit from showing a relative in Vilnius three meters away, reporting an event in a Kelmė district, it doesn’t make much sense, ”says Darius.

However, there are times when such tactics are the only way to get help. “A woman who lived in a small Lithuanian town once called us. She told us that her sister, who lives in Sweden, is now writing short messages that her cousin in Sweden is abusing her, using drugs when invited to her friends and trying to rape her. Thank God the woman was able to ask her sister for the address where she lives exactly in Sweden. That message came to us from Lithuania during sister, and the message left us for the relevant Swedish services, “Darius recalls.