Parking Mobility

Saw in TechCrunch that San Fransisco has signalled support for a very cool iPhone application: Fire Department:

The application itself is called Fire Department. Download it, and you’ll be asked if you’re trained in CPR. Click ‘Yes’, and the application will then passively monitor your location (without draining your phone’s battery). Here’s where the life-saving comes in: if someone calls 911 to report a possible heart attack victim, 911 dispatchers can send an alert to anyone in the vicinity with CPR training who has this app on their phone. They’ll immediately receive a push notification with the location of the victim, as well as the locations of any nearby automatic external defibrillators (AEDs). The whole process only takes a matter of seconds. Minutes are absolutely critical in these situations, and the immediate initiation of CPR before an ambulance arrives can be life saving.

This is very cool as it relies on citizens providing and supplementing services traditionally offered by cities themselves.  Parking Mobility runs into this sort of thing with cities from time to time with questions like “but don’t the police do that?”

The reality is the police (or any city service)  can not be everywhere at all times.  Enabling citizen involvement through mobile technology improves the delivery of city services for everyone.