Alarms are used by different groups of people in emergencies. Social alarms make use of the telephone system to call for help. A button is pressed on a special telephone which initiates an automatic telephone call to a control centre, where staff can establish the problem and send appropriate help.
Control centres operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have the potential to provide additional services to a much wider range of people. A local information system is one of these potential new services. For many users it will be their first step towards using information technology (IT) in their own home to help them in everyday life.
How it works
The control centre can send messages to individuals, or selected groups of people. For example, all those in a geographical area, who receive Meals on Wheels could be informed that traffic problems have caused a major delay. If the control centre has a large number of people to contact, the message can be sent simultaneously to all concerned. Ringing each person individually would take longer than the initial delay.
The control centre is set up to receive and assimilate information from outside organisations, eg weather stations, social services department, care service organisations, public services. Three categories of information can be sent out:
- information only, eg changes to public transport timetables or mobile library schedule
- warning of an event or trend which could cause a problem, eg rapid fall in temperature, or disconnection of power supply
- alarms, when a predetermined threshold has been reached, eg if air pollution rises to a certain level, asthma sufferers are alerted.
With the addition of a standard keyboard, the system will enable people to send e-mail to anywhere in the world. E-mail is sent to the control centre where it passes through a gateway to the Internet.
The system provides users with up-to-date local information and access to the Internet, via the special phone. It will achieve this without the need for a PC, which is relatively expensive and requires significant training to use.
For groups of people who are least likely to have access to a PC, the system provides a means of accessing the wealth of information which is being presented using Internet technology. Local municipalities which are experimenting with Intranets will be able to offer an alternative to a PC as the means of receiving and sending information.
Trials of the information system will start in late 1998.
Safe 21 will demonstrate how the existing social alarm infrastructure can be used to deliver a much broader range of services for people who are living alone. The project runs 1997-1999 with trials of equipment from late 1998.