The Application of Telematics and Smart Devices in Emergencies

The adoption of smart environments is becoming more and more important in many application scenarios such as healthcare, asset management and environmental monitoring. In emergency services, there are also very attractive use cases on next generation emergency services, presenting challenges that must be addressed in order to satisfy the requirements of both citizens and emergency service professionals. This chapter shares two interesting use cases depicting emergencies where the use of telematics and smart devices do enable improved emergency situational awareness for citizens and emergency services. Leveraging on the example of the eCall initiative, a thorough explanation is given on how next generation emergency services may further explore the promising new smart technologies to improve the communication dynamics with citizens and to attain increased effectiveness and performance in their daily mission to protect and safeguard lives.