Google’s emergency location tech hits India, starting with Uttar Pradesh

Google has just switched on its Emergency Location Service (ELS for short) in India for the first time, and Uttar Pradesh is leading the charge as the country’s first state to get it up and running.

For those unfamiliar, ELS is basically a clever little feature baked right into Android phones that automatically sends your precise location to emergency services the moment you dial 112 or any other emergency number. This works by pulling data from GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular networks all at once, which means it can pinpoint where you are to within about 50 metres.

That’s good enough to pinpoint your location when you’re panicking and can’t remember your exact address or, you know, you’re somewhere unfamiliar.

Uttar Pradesh gets it first

The integration was handled by Uttar Pradesh Police working alongside Pert Telecom Solutions, and it’s now supporting the millions of calls and texts that hit the state’s 112 emergency line every single day. That’s a lot of people potentially getting help faster.

During the pilot testing phase before this went live across all compatible Android devices (Android 6.0 or newer), ELS handled over 20 million calls and SMS messages. And the really impressive bit is that it managed to identify caller locations even when calls dropped just seconds after connecting. Anyone who’s ever had a call fail at the worst possible moment knows how valuable that is.

The whole system runs on Google’s machine-learning based Android Fused Location Provider. The technology basically figures out where you are regardless of whether you’re in a city centre or out in the middle of nowhere.

Now, before anyone gets worried about privacy stuff, the company is quick to point out that your location data never touches their servers. This only activates when you’re actually calling emergency services, and the coordinates go straight from your phone to the first responders.

ELS has already been operational in over 60 countries worldwide, and the results have consistently shown faster emergency response times. Google says they’re hoping other Indian states will follow Uttar Pradesh’s lead and get this set up in their own emergency infrastructure.