Socio-technical Aspects of Remote Media Control for a NG9-1-1 System

9-1-1 emergency calls mostly involve distress situations that cause people to panic while trying to answer questions or follow instructions given by a dispatcher. To obtain precious information with the least user intervention and reduced stress on the user, there is a need for the dispatcher to have a better control and understanding of the condition or situation at the other end. The increasing growth of smartphones embedded with camera, speaker phone, GPS, microphone and various other sensors, extends their usage from merely making calls to life saving gadgets during critical situations. By integrating these sensor rich smartphones and the rapidly growing VoIP technology, we propose a VoIP based Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) system for remote media control. Specifically, we use Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) in the implementation of the system using a mobile and a PC client. The proposed system on the mobile client accounted for less than 25% of CPU utilization even with video transmission. The average network utilization was about 10 and 72 kbps for audio and video, respectively. With these encouraging results, we believe the proposed remote media control system will facilitate information acquisition and decision making in emergency situations.