Yes, well sadly please forgive me for not being optimistic about this, but I have my reasons. Some of which I will explain here.
Pakistan has a kichri of emergency hotlines and helplines, some of which I have included for you below:
- Edhi 115
- Chhipa Ambulance 1020
- Sindh Peoples Ambulance 1023
- Rescue 1122
- Rescue 15
- Rangers 1101
- Anti Terrorism Hotline 1135
- Pakistan Medical Assistance Hotline 1166
- Aman Ambulance 1021
- Fire Service 16
- Child Protection 1121
- Cyber Crime 9911
- Covid Helpline 1166
- Police Corruption 8787
- Disaster Management Hotline 1129
- Highway and Motorway Police 130
- Gas Emergency Hotline 1199
- Electricity Emergency 118
- Water Board 111-305-305
- Coast Guard Search and Rescue 021-99215251
- Wildlife Animal Rescue: 051-2601912
Now looking at all these numbers, people could be forgiven for thinking that one number such as 911 would be a great change, one that would mean that those in need of assistance can get the right help at the right time from the right people.
However, when you look at this massive list of telephone numbers, you have to ask yourself, who is staffing these numbers? What is the call handling SLA? What is the brand equity and consumer confidence for each of these numbers.
Now, Pakistan already has two very well established emergency numbers, these are 15 (Founded by the late Naasir Khan Durrani in 1998) and Rescue 1122 (founded by Dr. Rizwan Nasir in 2004). Both these numbers and their associated brands have acceptance among the public and varying degrees of recognition as being bonafide emergency numbers.
One of the issues that concerns me, based on my experience and research concerns the call routing, call handling and resourcing of these calls. To have a look at demand management and service level agreements, please see my post on this issue here:
That's more like it! M4
defence.pk
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Figure 1: Example of a unified EOC: Emergency Operations Centre. Copyright Rescue Ranger 2021
Secondly, who is going to be the lead agency for handling the call routing. If we look at the US (911) or UK(999) systems, these are routed via several national call centres operated by AT&T in USA and BT in the U.K. When someone calls 999 in the UK, this call reaches ones of several BT call centres, the operator will ask the caller "Emergency, which service?" and will direct the call to the relevant regional emergency service contact centre. In the case of a silent caller the BT operator has access to the callers "subscriber" details and can pass these to the police if a call-back or visit is required.
Please see the example video below:
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Figure 2:Example data flow of a call to the EOC from start to finish (C) RescueRanger 2021.
Now whilst in the US and UK the callers subscriber details are available to the emergency contact centres via BT or AT&T, etc, in Pakistan there is no such agreement to legally "intercept" the originating subscriber and pass these details onto the receiver (in this case for example Rescue 1122). As of January, 2021 there were 173.2 Million mobile connections in Pakistan(1), the majority of inbound calls to Rescue 1122 are cellular calls and this is where the problem comes:
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Figure 3: Example of cellular call routing from tx(sender) via BTS to MSC to rx(receiver).
The above scenario raises a number of concerns, firstly the issue of abuse of a "toll free" emergency number. Rescue 1122 received 20,555,131 calls during 2019 across Punjab. Out of these only 1,192,044 were emergency calls. Rescue 1122 received 19,363,087 calls that were not related to any kind of emergency. (2)
The second issue comes from the possibility that the caller may terminate the call before contact details can be obtained or incident location can be ascertained, poor cellular coverage and dead-zones can also act as mitigation factors for the safety and welfare of the service user.
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Figure 4: An example of how PTA may facilitate caller intercept in the case of a "silent" or anonymous caller.
The third area of concern is that of redundancies, if there is only one truncated network providing unified communication to the entire national infrastructure of emergency services, the partial or complete loss of service due to power outage or similar unmitigated crisis may create a critical incident in terms of service users unable to access emergency services, therefore a network with multiple redundancies is one consideration that needs to be addressed.
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Figure 5: Example of network redundancy, allowing the (EOC: Emergency Operations Centre) to automatically switch from PSTN to GSM/Cellular network in the event of an outage.
Beyond resilience and redundancies there are the issues of interoperability, coordination and communication between multiple agencies and service providers in an emergency situation. I have written in detail about this, you can read more about this here:
Leadership in Emergencies | Pakistan Defence
Next is the issue of designing a system from the ground up, this is a particularly complex and costly undertaking, I have written about the challenges and opportunities in this endeavour at length here:
Rescue 1122 "service above self" | Pakistan Defence
Another major concern is the lack of a single record management system or CAD: Computer Aided Dispatch System, every single entity that this 911 system is planning on "joining up" speaks different organisational languages, regional languages, use different operating systems and some rely completely on paper.
This will require training on a mammoth footing, again I have written a working paper on this using Balochistan as an example, you can read more about that here:
Terrorism and casualty care in Balochistan | Pakistan Defence
One of the issues will be to develop a nationally accepted and uniform CAD: Computer Aided Dispatch, back in 2018 I started working with two programming students on developing a free of cost CAD solution which could be used nationally by police, fire and ambulance, sadly someone decided to steal the bulk of my work on this as is the case with many thing in Pakistan.
Here is one screenshot of a CAD which has been designed from the ground up using an open source solution:
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Figure 6: Example of a CAD: Computer Aided Dispatch software developed using Open Source tools.
Public acceptance is crucial, because an informed public is the best way to get support for emergency and rescue services. Which requires investment of time, effort and ICE (Information, Communication and Education) material be in the form of media based PR, word of mouth or printed material.
In a study conducted by the Journal of Humanities and Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Studies, 300 people were randomly surveyed, in response to the question
“In case of emergency which of the following will reach you first?” most of the respondents,
245 out of 277, thought that Rescue 1122 would reach first. This reflected the public confidence in the service.
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Finally, there is an issue of resource. As someone who is speaking from personal, first hand experience, outside of the major cities, the capacity for these rural services to cope with demand, simply doesn't exist. I talk about upskilling and capacity development of emergency services in Pakistan to cope with modern demand in this post:
Policing the Police | Pakistan Defence
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In closing, I do wish this project all the success with full sincerity, however it is important to remember that this is not simply a matter of "reinventing the wheel", reinventing the wheel is a good thing, but before you do, it should be clear "why and how" are you going to re-invent it.
References:
(1) Digital Pakistan, Simon Kemp:
Digital in Pakistan: All the Statistics You Need in 2021 — DataReportal – Global Digital Insights , accessed on 14062021
(2) Rescue 1122 receives over 94% fake calls. Express Tribune -
Rescue 1122 receives over 94% fake calls (tribune.com.pk) , accessed on 14062021
