How two innovative start-ups are using Ordnance Survey data to help the emergency services save lives

Henry Sternberg, founder of Blue Light Maps, and Nick Sutton, founder of EmergencyLocate, are committed to improving support to emergency control rooms and responders – drawing on their direct personal experience in police and ambulance services.

EmergencyLocate

Nick, a strategic operations manager with the Scottish Ambulance Service, has worked in NHS Ambulance Services across England and Scotland for 20 years. He developed EmergencyLocate during the COVID-19 pandemic. The app is designed for emergency, search and rescue organisations, providing:

• Precise location pings for 999 callers from smartphones, including temporary tracking, all delivered without even needing the caller to speak.
• Two-way text messaging from control rooms to smartphone callers for situations where speech is not possible, due to safety or medical issues, with language detection and translation built in.
• 3D satellite and urban building models to enhance coordination between control room, responders and multi-agency responses.
• SAR Deploy: a navigation aid that bridges the gap between leaving a vehicle and reaching the scene.

The platform supports enhanced conversion of what3words and also uses the OS Emergency Services Gazetteer to supplement its mapping and to signpost responders to previously unlisted physical objects, such as roundabouts or post-boxes, which they can reference on the ground to locate their destination. Nick is also planning to incorporate information from the Vernacular Names Tool, launched by OS last year to support emergency services by identifying locations from colloquial nicknames.

Nick said: “For an emergency response, nothing is more critical than location. And I believe location isn’t just about the where, it’s also about how responders are able to make best use of the location data available. The EmergencyLocate platform has been built using extensive real-world experience of this problem to help pinpoint callers more effectively and efficiently. We’re really lucky, here in the UK, to have good adoption of Advanced Mobile Location (AML) technology to provide caller’s coordinates to 999 in most cases. However, there are significant limitations that leave a sizeable gap in the provision of accurate location data, and that’s where EmergencyLocate steps in."

EmergencyLocate has been used over 45,000 times across the UK, Canada, and Australia, supporting responses for water-based incidents, vulnerable or missing persons, medical issues preventing clear communication with 999, as well as incidents where safety or violence is a factor. The SAR Deploy function is integrated with the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme, making it simple for responders to share incident location data easily across services, and receives 100–150 daily uses by frontline 999 staff all over the UK.

In the UK, EmergencyLocate is regularly used by the Scottish Ambulance Service.

Humberside Fire and Rescue is also using the platform as well as Scottish Mountain Rescue teams. Nick will present the app to UK Fire and Rescue Service control room managers in the near future to encourage wider adoption.

Blue Light Maps

Henry, who previously led innovation projects in financial services, now works full-time on his app whilst also serving as a special constable for 13 years. Blue Light Maps focuses on routing and navigation to incidents, leveraging OS average speed data, and includes three main features:

• Blue light routing: this identifies the fastest routes for emergency vehicles, including roads normally restricted to the public (e.g. bus lanes, restricted turns, pedestrian areas), where emergency service exemptions apply.
• Consolidated geospatial data: improved situational awareness by combining OS National Geographic Database (OS NGD) address and building data with Google Street View and custom emergency service data (e.g. fire hydrant locations).
• Driver alerts via Waze: uses Waze to alert other drivers of approaching emergency vehicles, helping reduce blue light collisions—of which there are over 4,000 involving police vehicles annually.

Henry explained that the app was inspired by his own experiences and the critical importance of trusted, detailed location data in emergency response:

“When I was first trained to drive on blue lights, lots of new active travel schemes like Low Traffic Neighbourhoods were implemented in the area I policed. I realised that the navigation apps I relied on were taking me on longer routes, even though as an emergency service driver I was still allowed to use the old shortcuts. When I looked into this, I was amazed at how big a problem this was across the country and realised there was a vital gap in mapping solutions designed for frontline emergency services personnel. That inspired me to create a solution.”

He also stressed the importance of accurate location data in navigation and routing:

“I was once delayed finding the victim of a stabbing because I didn’t have access to detailed maps of an estate. Detail really matters. OS NGD lets us map house numbers and blocks clearly – whether council estates or farmhouses – areas consumer apps often struggle with. And while control rooms have this OS data, frontline staff often don’t.”

Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service has rolled Blue Light Maps out to all fire appliances with custom hydrant and fire risk data overlays.

Nick and Henry are now exploring how their apps can integrate. For example, EmergencyLocate’s SAR Deploy feature could direct users to navigational apps like Blue Light Maps.

Geovation Accelerator Programme

Both founders have had invaluable support and mentorship from the Geovation Accelerator Programme. Henry was successful in the Spring 2023 cohort, while Nick is still in the Geovation Scotland programme – and won the Scottish Geospatial Technology Award from the organisation last year.

Nick said: “The Accelerator programme has been instrumental in helping me to develop my ideas into a life-saving solution. It has opened my eyes to the support available for founders in geospatial, tech and far beyond. The support from OS has been incredible and I’ve been coached by absolute rockstar mentors, a few of whom have agreed to continue to support me when my cohort ends.”