Anna Forrester
Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory has conceptualized a new smartphone-based emergency alert technology that works to provide location-specific notifications to users.
The lab said Wednesday the Arbitrary-Size Location-Aware Targeting concept utilizes geolocation technologies to boost the alerts’ accuracy of delivery.
“ASLAT uses the location awareness of wireless devices — their internal knowledge of where they are on Earth — to eliminate false negatives and positives when sending an emergency alert across multiple cellular network sites,” said Emre Gunduzhan, ASLAT technical lead at APL.
He added that notifications target people in the vicinity of an emergency incident or those who are headed toward the location.
APL has tested ASLATÂ for suitability with technologies or techniques such as the global positioning system, “time of arrivals” and “time difference of arrivals.”
The lab discussed the technology in a June report to the Department of Homeland Security‘s science and technology directorate.
