Next-gen iPhone unsuitable for Emergency Management?
The recent announcement of the second generation iPhone has a large number of people buzzing. The inclusion of Global Positioning System (GPS) capabilities into the phone creates a very capable mobile computing platform that has a lot of potential for emergency management.
What features make it a potentially useful tool for emergency managers?
- Large storage – 8-16GB. Plenty of room for photos, documents and other material in a slim and very portable device.
- Excellent user interface. I’ve been using an iPod Touch (iPhone less the phone) for 9 months now and have to say it is the nicest user interface I’ve used yet on a small device. I find it truly painful to use my Treo 750v mobile phone in comparison.
- Multi-method positioning. The upcoming iPhone will be able to use three different methods to locate the devices current position. First, and most accurately it will use the GPS. It will then fall back to wifi, listening for nearby wireless devices and looking these up from a georeferenced database over the Internet, If both of these fail, then the least accurate method of using the cell towers will be used.
- Multi-channel communication. The device will not only be able to connect via mobile carriers, but it the previous version it has wifi – at the minimum it could be used to connect to a local wireless LAN and access a Sahana server disconnected from the Internet.
Sure, there are some negatives too – it is a fragile device not necessarily suited to hazardous environments, and it doesn’t have replaceable batteries. Everything has limitations though and if these are recognised and accommodated, one could still achieve benefits from its usage.
Apple has also released a Software Development Kit (SDK) and infrastructure to allow software developers to write applications to run on the iPhone. This creates opportunities for development of tools that can be deployed for emergency management on an iPhone.
One example – as the iPhone has a GPS, camera, and means of connecting to the Internet (wifi or mobile) – it wouldn’t be too hard to write an application that could be made available for free download to citizen’s iPhones. Then, anytime they see say damage on the streets surrounding their home or work, they could take a photo, fill out some quick optional comments on a form, and submit the georeferenced photo and comments over the Internet to a Sahana server and instantly have the image geolocated for the emergency managers use. And, if the phone can’t make a connection due to failure or congestion, then the images are queued for delivery once communications are restored.
However, recent news of the iPhone SDK suggests that such an application would be in breach of the license agreement. I’m not a developer, but Electronista provides the following text from the license agreement, Section 3.3.7
applications may not be designed or marketed for real time route guidance; automatic or autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or other mechanical devices; dispatch or fleet management; or emergency or life-saving purposes.
I don’t have a problem with most of these – but the broad definition of emergency may stop deployment of emergency management applications on the iPhone. This is understandable from a liability perspective, but I hope it doesn’t stop developers creating ground-breaking emergency management applications using the potential of the iPhone.
Speaking of which, location-aware applications for the iPhone2 are already being displayed. Two very interesting ones to pop up so far are Loopt and OmniFocus. Very cool possibilites are opening up. Loopt is a location-aware social networking tool that lets you see if any of your friends are nearby so you can hook up for a meal or coffee. OmniFocus for the iPhone introduces location aware task lists. Near the office? Your office tasks pop up. Need to go to the grocery store to get item on your grocery list? It will provide directions.
It is going to be an exciting time for location-based services!
My understanding is that the caveats in the license agreement are there for liability reasons. Essentially the positioning capabilities and mapping cannot be relied upon to be completely accurate.
Fragility issues could be easily handled by a good cover or case.
Kevin Toomer
12 Jun 08 at 15:54
I agree – I’m sure that is the main reason that they are there. Just as long as they take a passive approach to any software that is developed for emergency management – rather than actively banning it on the platform. Then again, Apple would be on the path to a one-way hiding if they were the grouch that came and took away emergency management applications to protect their liability.
A case would be a partial solution for the fragility issues – however given the primary interface is touch, I’m not sure how much protection could be given to the screen itself with impacting on user input?
Another aspect I’m interested in is finding out how sensitive the GPS capability is – have they opted for a basic low-sensitivity chipset (which I imagine is more compact and uses less power) or have they managed to fit in a high-sensitivity receiver that has far better signal reception in urban environments?
rediguana
13 Jun 08 at 12:11
I think your blog post is misleading. Here is the full text of the section you referred in the post
” For Applications that use location-based APIs, such Applications may not be designed or
marketed for real time route guidance; automatic or autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft,
or other mechanical devices; dispatch or fleet management; or emergency or life-saving
purposes.”
So as far as i understand, they are restricting the usage to applications using location based API and not all applications, which makes sense as the location based API might not be reliable and they are out of control of Apple.
Vivek Khurana
9 Nov 08 at 09:23
Hi Vivek. My problem with their handling of it is that Apple are just outright not allowing the location-based services to be used during an emergency. Let’s not forget that the whole reason we have located-based services in phones these days, are because of the US Government’s direction a decade ago to add location-based services via Enhanced 911 to make it possible to identify the location of a mobile phone during an emergency call to 911.
As someone that is well aware of GPS issues around reliable location, it should be up to the application to gracefully handle the location error. Most GPS units are capable of estimating the error in their current position (e.g. EPE, HDOP, VDOP) so there is no reason for Apple to opt-out of location-based emergency applications, when they should allow developers to assess the error information coming from the A-GPS chip to determine how accurate the position information is likely to be, and then have the application respond accordingly.
Just because it is out of Apple’s control, it doesn’t mean that with a broad sweep a license agreement, that Apple should rule out using the iPhone as a tool for helping people be more resilient when an emergency or disaster occurs.
As it stands, I can’t write an application that provides a location-based look-up of Civil Defence shelters in New Zealand, so that NZ iPhone users can always have that information in their pokcet.
Gavin Treadgold
11 Nov 08 at 10:46
[...] of whether or not the next generation iPhone is suitable for emergency management. Gav’s blog kicked off a conversation that continued on the Humanitarian ICT list serve where several [...]
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