Smart911 is bridging the gap between the 40 year old infrastructure of today’s Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) and sophisticated expectations of today’s mobile citizens.

When you dial 9-1-1 from a mobile phone, your exact location can’t automatically be pinpointed by a call taker like it can when you dial from a land line. That’s a problem because more than 70 percent of citizens dial 9-1-1 from their mobile phones. To overcome this challenge and enhance emergency response overall, municipalities nationally are using Smart911. Smart911 lets citizens create secure safety profiles that appear to call takers the second a call is made. Profiles can include address, photos, pets and medical conditions—whatever you’d want a first responder to know about you and your family in an emergency, you can share.

Profiles appear to 9-1-1 call takers instantly, regardless of the mode of inbound communication, enhancing emergency outcomes and saving lives.

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/aux_map.html Tweak the Tweet uses Twitter to facilitate communications between citizens and emergency workers during a crisis. Emergency organizations responding to a disaster put out tweets, using a specific format and conventions so that real-time information about the incident is conveyed in a way that is useful to both emergency crews and the general public.

"The idea requires no new technology whatsoever," said Starbird, a National Science Foundation graduate fellow who is pursuing her doctorate in technology, media and society in CU's ATLAS program. "A person just has to slightly alter how they're putting down their message in terms of the language they're using. By formatting the information a little differently, it helps automate the processing and aggregation of those messages."

SHERIFF LAUNCHES MOBILE APP FOR CITIZENS TO TURN IN CRIME TIPS:
iWatchHarrisCounty. Do You?

(HOUSTON, TX) – Sheriff Adrian Garcia and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO), in collaboration with iThinQware, Inc. ©, launched in September 2011a free mobile application that allows citizens to turn in crime tips using their mobile device.

iWatchHarrisCounty is a virtual crime watch program that empowers citizens across the county to report suspicious behaviors or activities by turning in tips as text messages and emails with image and video attachments, and phone calls directly to the HCSO from almost any mobile phone or PC. Citizens can remain anonymous or may choose to disclose their identity.

There are four ways to report crime tips:
•Online at iWatchHarrisCounty.com
•Text a tip to 1-855-HCSO-iWatch (1-855-427-6492)
•Use the downloadable app found on iWatchHarrisCounty.com
•Call 1-855-HCSO-iWatch (1-855-427-6492)*

*iWatchHarrisCounty is for submitting crime tips only, not emergencies. Emergency calls should be made to 9-1-1.

The HCSO is the first sheriff’s office in the country to use the iWatch mobile app.

“The iWatchHarrisCounty app helps us reach out to a digitally connected community in ways never before possible,” said Sheriff Adrian Garcia. “Nowadays, almost everyone has a cell phone or a computer. Now you can use that mobile device, that technology, to help us prevent or solve crimes by sending us a tip from anywhere, anytime – if you see something, say something.”

The "If You See Something, Say Something™" public awareness campaign was launched nationally last year by the Department of Homeland Security to raise awareness of indicators of terrorism and violent crime, and to emphasize the importance of reporting suspicious activity to the proper law enforcement authorities.

“Until we invented the iWatch application, no citizen could say something with enough immediacy or with the precise detail that a criminal investigations agency could fully benefit from having,” said Dan Elliott, founder of iThinQware, Inc. ©.

The iWatch application allows the HCSO to receive, vet, track, forward and share crime tips within its own organization, as well as to push out tips, photos, videos and information to other agencies if applicable.