"International"
Emergency Calls in Finland
February 24, 2011As follow-up to discussing the complicated system of eight emergency numbers in Austria, as well as providing an overview of the 112 emergency number used in Europe, I will focus on another European Union (EU) country: Finland. Finland is famous for being home to a company that started by producing rubber boots and car tires and is today a leader in cell phone production, and for its use of the Finnish sauna. Almost every business building in the country has a wooden sauna cabin adjacent to a meeting room(s), allowing executives to continue a business meeting at a dry heat temperature of approximately 90° C (190° F).
Read full articleCEA-Leti and Partners Develop System to Monitor Public-Safety Personnel in Dangerous Situations
January 28, 2011Grenoble, France — CEA-Leti and its partners have developed a system combining motion-capture and precise indoor localization. The goal of this device is improving the safety of firefighters and other public-safety personnel in buildings and other confined areas such as underground parking lots. CASSIDIAN, 3D Plus, and SDIS, the emergency-response service for the Rhone region, are Leti’s partners in the Demoloc Project, which is funded by the French National Research Agency.
Read full articleForeign Correspondence
January 24, 2011As the U.S. and Canada have designated 9-1-1 as their unique emergency number, other countries have their individual, historically grown structures of emergency numbers. A few years ago, an APCO International evaluation revealed that there are more than 170 different numbers worldwide to reach first responders. We thought it would be interesting to identify differences in countries, cultures and emergency numbers. For my first article, I have chosen to report about my home country, Austria, and provide an introduction to the European-wide “112” emergency number.
Read full articleCommunications Down Under
January 5, 2011To provide the reader with some history as to how the Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) arrived at where it is today, we have to take you on a journey back in time. In Queensland, ambulance services began Sept. 12, 1892, when the first meeting of the City Ambulance Transport Brigade was held.
Read full articleWhen West Trains East
October 11, 2010In the August 2009 issue, we published an article by Mark Boudreaux called “9-1-1 Instructor for Hire: When West Trains East.” The article was a first-person account from an APCO adjunct instructor who traveled to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to provide public safety telecommunications training at King Abdullah’s University of Science and Technology (KAUST) — a brand new, state-of-the art facility on the coast of the Red Sea in Thuwal. Here, Boudreaux continues his story.
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