Paris (AFP)

The death of French hiker Simon Gautier in Italy, found dead after a fall and when he managed to reach the rescue, raises the question of emergency geolocation, whereas a system has existed for several years and is used in a dozen European countries.

What is AML?

AML (for Advanced Mobile Location) was launched in 2014 in the United Kingdom. Co-developed by the four British telecom operators and the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturers HTC and Japanese Sony, this system aims to directly give the location of the caller when he dials an emergency number on his smartphone.

Specifically, the system, installed on the devices, automatically sends an SMS to the emergency services with the precise positioning of the device.

The system has gradually spread and is now available in about fifteen countries, including about ten European Union countries, as well as on most devices under the Android operating system, as well as on iPhones.

Google has also developed an equivalent system, available on all devices equipped with Android, Emergency Location Service (ELS), which operates in exactly the same way as the AML.

How does geolocation work?

Geolocation is today largely mobilized by smartphones: many applications use it, whether for the command of a taxi or a VTC, the proposal of itineraries, dating or even games.

Geolocation is usually based on GPS (satellite positioning system) and triangulation via the mobile network.

GPS requires a certain quality of network, 3G or 4G, which allows to send or receive larger data packets. Otherwise, it is the triangulation (the establishment of a position with respect to three relay antennas) that intervenes, but with less precision.

During an emergency call, the AML automatically uses the best available location data - GPS system, Wifi connection ... - to send them to emergency services.

In Austria, the country where this data is available, more than 92% of the AML messages sent provide a position with an accuracy of 100 meters, 85% even up to an accuracy of 50 meters, according to a report published in June by the European Association of Emergency Numbers (EENA).

In Finland, these accuracy rates rise to 88% and 78% respectively, according to the same source.

The only technique of triangulation however depends greatly on the density of the mobile network: in cities, where the network is very dense, the positioning can be done to a few tens of meters, but in the areas little covered, it can correspond to rays of several hundred meters, even a few kilometers.

Why do some countries not use AML?

The AML requires an adaptation of the equipment of the emergency services, so that they can receive the geolocation data - which is not yet the case in France or Italy.

One of the reasons is that the relief is managed in a decentralized way, at the level of the departments in France and the regions in Italy, with computer systems that are not necessarily built on a common platform - an obstacle to make the AML system operational across the country.

© 2019 AFP