UKH

No real point to this post, just having a rant. I had the misfortune of calling an ambulance for myself yesterday, I was on my own at a several hundred meters from the road, bleeding heavily and in a considerable amount of pain. Trying to spell random words to emergency service staff, with issues over different accents, plurals and frankly words I don't think either of us had ever used before was extremely challenging to say the least. I suppose it worked in the end as both MR and the ambulance found me but it took bloody ages, whereas a six fig number would have been dead easy for me to read. Just saying

Sorry to hear about your disaster!

I agree W3W is a bit flawed

The OS locate app is great, and free, same concept but just gives a 10 figure grid reference and altitude. Doesn't even need a phone signal to work, just GPS!

A good one to have installed 

I have got it and would have used it given the choice as your right its dead handy! 999 texted me a link to W3W and instructed me to do it. Its the system!

I thought if your phone is registered with 999 they can locate you automatically.

TBH they may well have used that, as my phone is registered. I did actually get a text from search and rescue that said would allow them to see my location. However by that point I was hobbling to the road and missed it.

You don't even need to be registered if you call rather than text.   Your provider is required to establish and pass on location of your phone if you make a 999 call.  Not just info on which mast and proximity which it used to be.

The registration is only if you want to send a text to 999.

the W3W marketing really angers me, they have a FAR to cosy relationship with a couple of English police forces and really leverage that to try and force their product.

That'll be either SARLOC app or the find phone function in SARCALL - both far better tools than W3W!

W3W is a stupid idea for this - it's equally stupid that emergency services can't deal with OS grid or long/lat.  I've been in a similar (but less serious, so I hope you recover quickly) position, and the best I could do (it was on a canal) was give the name of a nearby pub and say to walk from there.

The main flaw with W3W is that if you get it slightly wrong you could end up the other side of the world.

Quite. I had heard this but hadn't really appreciated it until trying to use it in the feild, on a crackerly phone line whilst trying not to panic. Getting the right words across was really hard!

Absolutely.  And given how trivial it is (or should be) to convert from one set of coordinates to another while sitting at a computer in a control room, they should be able to handle OLC too.

(An alternative to W3W devised by Google for similar stated aims - superior in many ways, not least of all that Google have made it open source, so it can't be monopolised by anyone in the future.  Including them, which I guess is why it's had none of the promotional PR bullshit that W3W have thrown it in their ongoing attempt to get enough 'market penetration' that they can start to monetise it and charge for access.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code

There are lots of flaws, and in the OP's case I think the main one was that it's much more difficult to clearly communicate three random words with no context over a voice connection than the marketing guff would have you believe.

That one, the words being slightly off indicating a location that's on the other side of the world, is actually something that W3W cite as an advantage.  They reckon it makes it clear that the location is wrong, as opposed to, say, an incorrect digit in an OS grid ref showing a location that's close enough to be feasible but far enough away to be useless.  Unfortunately this too is marketing bullshit, and there are lots of examples where eg. making one of the words a plural will cause the same problems.

Obligatory excellent video discussing all this stuff:
(It's a really good one to 'share' with people who've fallen for the hype and don't understand what's wrong with W3W.  Too bad whoever decided it would be a good thing to adopt as a defacto 'standard' for UK emergency services didn't take it on board - or have the wit to figure it out for themselves!)
youtube.com/watch?v=SqK0ciE0rto&

Agree absolutely, but isn't the main flaw really that if you get it slightly wrong you may end up just a few km from the correct location, which is potentially much more dangerous than the other side of the world, which you'd hope ambulance control would suss! See:

https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-suitable-for-safe...

Wait, what?! They wanted you to f&£k around installing an app rather than just taking the grid ref?? I think I would actually have lost my shit with them and sent something from https://www.fourkingmaps.co.uk/ instead.

To be fair to W3W, which is difficult, if you go to settings you can get it to display a 6,8 or 10 OS grid reference.

The advantage over OS locate escapes me.

It wasn't quite that bad, I got a text which took me too the W3W webpage (and the code), I was lucky I had 4g.

I appreciate the theoretical simplicity. But it's not like you have to understand grid reffs to read 6 figs off a screen/punch into a keyboard whitch would have been way easier in extremis.

I'd still question why they can't take two letters and six numbers that I'll already have before I dial. 

In case anyone reading this ever finds me in a mess, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.blerg is always front and centre on my home screen.

I broadly agree with the criticisms that people have raised here, and as far as I remember various MR-related teams and organisations have been critical of w3w as a tool for locating people. It just seems to be the non-MR emergency services that prefer it - possibly due to it being easier to train people to use.

What3words have also been very enthusiastic about taking legal action against people using their word list to create alternative software: the sole extent of their "intellectual property" being a list of words and a simple algorithm for mapping lat/long to three words from that list, which they seem to feel that this is copyright-able. Consequently they don't innovate but just squat on their niche market dominance.

I've never needed to call MRT for myself but have done several times for others, to locations in the Lakes, Dales and at Hadrian's Wall. Would simply stating your location (ie Scugdale crag) have been enough? The local team would know where to find you given this. The last time I had to call rescue I can't even recall if I had to give an OS ref but it was ten or more years ago. One place was on the path at Nick Head between Glenridding and Glencoyne. Both Patterdale and Penrith teams managed to get there asap and then the air ambulance by me providing a verbal description talking into my phone.

Humans do seem to have a knack for complicating things don't they. Particularly when there's money to be made. I'm disappointed the  emergency services fell for this nonsense.

I only spoke to the ambulance guys, I guess they called MR, I would imagine if I told MR what route I was under they would know exactly where I was!

I will also add I was bloody lucky MR were at a nearby event so they were with me all suited and booted in under 40 minutes which was impressive.

I witnessed a road accident a few years ago and tried to give them a grid ref, she asked me for the post code. “I’m not trying to send a f****ing letter, I’m trying to tell you about a road accident”, “ok, what can you see”, “I can see a pile of smashed up cars - now can I tell you where I am” “yes - which town are you near” “I’m near Durham” “are you left or right of Durham?” “FFS can you transfer me to someone who understands the points of a compass”

W3W is better than what we used to have. I’ve used it on top of a hill, in the wind and got the position over reasonably easily, I gave her the 3 words then used each in a sentence. I’d rather that than use a grid ref and potentially have someone misheard a 9 for a 5 and be 4km away from me.

I appreciate its a useful tool in some circumstances but try using a word you have just read for the first time in a sentance with an open fracture pissing blood everywhere! I would imagine numbers would have been a tonne easier.

And 'Grid Reference' is even simpler than OS Locate. Tiny. Free. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

If you ask for the police instead of the ambulance, then you can give them a grid reference. They will dispatch an ambulance anyway. If you ask for an ambulance, they wont take a grid reference and may not dispatch a more appropriate service if needed which could lead to an extra wait if they arrive on the scene and need MR, police or fire service. At least this is the case in Scotland. 

Maybe as a future premium service the w3w app will offer directions to the nearest location that has easy and unambiguous words. 

The blue dot on google maps is what ‘What three words’ use. The google location can be sent direct to any one. 

Also with the complication that the words used are not universal.  I've a German friend who installed his version at home in Germany and so used a completely different set of German words for all locations compared to the English app.  Became evident when he was trying to use it to find a crag carpark to meet up with the club!

If you have a data signal the app will translate but if not no way to make it work.

Even assuming you install the right version for the country you're in, using words in a foreign language and trying to spell them etc is far from simple in high stress!

Quite right. When I look at my home screen that's the one I use.

Brilliant. But you just wasted half an hour of my life sending mates their new identities!

As a broader bit of advice...If you are 'off tarmac' and you want an emergency response requiring medical then you will most often be better calling [999...Ask for the POLICE and then ask for MOUNTAIN RESCUE]. MR has both both POLICE and AMBULANCE services as calling agencies...but POLICE will be immediately notifying MR with the details you have given and the MR will be responding (first by contacting you and getting details that will make the whole thing more efficient especially in terms of local knowledge and tech...e.g. which route have you fallen off and using SARLOC to pinpoint you.
The ambulance service control might not be so reponsive and will often be tasking to the nearest bit of road that your W3W was close to...which might not be the access point for your location...more importantly in this day and age they might triage you as CAT3 and on a busy day the response for CAT3 can be in hours (as higher priority CAT 1s and CAT2s will keep you low in the stack of jobs they are responding to)....and then when they do turn up they may realsise they then need MR to get to you, to treat and extract you the road. Addititionally, things that might need doing to you are often outside the scope of practice for some ambulance service crew e.g reducing a fractured limb but are bread and butter and in scope of practice for MR. MR works very closely with ambulance services...but 999...Police...Mountain Rescue is almost always going to be the most relaible and quicker response.

Great post simondgee! Filed away for future (and hopefully not required) reference!

BTW, hope you are recovering from your mishap.

A couple of counter examples where w3w saved the day. Onc stumbling across a car accident and able to call an ambulance. Another needing to summon the police in Croatia. Worked both times. Obviously other options are available  

Anyone know what happens if you not in an MR territory? I live in North Herts and there’s a lowland rescue service, who would be essential if I had an accident in a rural area several km from a tarmac road, but I don’t know if I can ask for them via Police. 

I have reluctantly concluded that what three words is here to stay and would be needed if for instance at a vehicle crash in the countryside I.e. caller asks for ambulance and they then request W3W location. 

For UK mountain areas with an MRT I would always go Police>MR but less sure about lowland areas. 
 

on a related note, has anyone got experience of the Apple 14 and upwards GPS text system when needed in emergency use? 
 

A worry with a software dependent system like W3W is the potential for enshitification in the future 

I've had that before, what road are you on, "the road between x and y", they wanted the number. How would most people know the number of some minor B road. I was like just drive the road you won't miss it. 

Sorry to hear about your accident, hope you make a swift recovery.

999 - Police - Mountain Rescue is def the way to go if you have an accident away from the road, especially if you're going to need stretchering off because ambulance crews don't have 'off-road' stretchers.

That's an interesting experience with W3W - struggling to transmit the info because of your pain instead of a simple grid ref which you would have found more easily. We had a very well-organised DoE group need help a couple of years ago, and ring 999 with an accurate grid ref of their location. Control (not sure if Police or Ambulance) made them download W3W and use that instead of simply passing over the grid ref to us in MR. Sigh.

There's a good chance that the team would have known the route you were on, or would have had swift access to route maps. A grid ref and route name would have been really valuable info.

Hope you're recovering.  

My experience with W3W has led me to prefer https://www.fourkingmaps.co.uk/.

T.

In a loss-leading 'solution', that 'potential' is almost a certainty.

I suspect I express the view, about every six months, that whoever specified the emergency services GIS without the capability of accepting the National Grid Reference system of our National Mapping Agency should be sacked. Then shot, buried, dug up, and then sacked again...

If it's not integrated, all they need is to have Streetview open, which provides multiple coordinate conversions.

Asking people to download an app is just disgraceful.

Actually, that is often a huge advantage, rather than a flaw. Something that is so obviously wrong can easily be spotted and corrected. Narrow mistakes are much harder to spot and are generally more consequential. 

Unfortunately, the W3W words assignment isn't quite optimised for this, as https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-suitable-for-safe... points out 

W3W aside, I hope you have a speedy recovery!

Absolutely no good can come of going all in on such a litigious walled garden. It's just impossible to write a good ending to the story. Needs to be replaced by something open, and soon.

The problem is, the ambulance service can't take a grid reference. They don't know what one is, whether it's given in OS format or longitude/latitude. They can only understand postcodes and, at a push, a location on a numbered road. Unless they have updated their service recently.

One would think though that the call handler, who isn't busy having a medical emergency, would be able to punch 8 characters into the computer in front of them for you more readily than the person who is busy taking their last breaths could download and install an app.

Transcription is easily solved; Grid Reference will send the GR in a text, or copy into any messaging app you like.

SARLOC avoids all this nonsense completely, pulling the location from the phone.

I have a friend who works in a police call centre and yes W3W is their system of choice. 

However they will take any (all) info you have, so if you're unlucky enough to be in the same position again give them the OS grid reference as well  - W3W can convert a grid ref for you/them and if it's a MRT job they are obviously very comfortable with grid refs.

See my earlier rant about GIS specifications...

Yes I was shocked that the police can't automatically get your location from the call.

They can get what mast you're calling from, but have to pay every time they request the service provider for more accurate info  - FFS emergency services should routinely have access all info they could potentially use for free.

Austerity, innit?

In spite of the fact that knowing where you are going saves time. Which is money.

As with many 'austerity' and similar cost-cutting measures (in both public & private economies), it's a false economy.

Of course, the answer would have been a provision in a Telecoms Act mandating free provision of emergency locations...

Yes  learnings from this for me, ask for police then MR. Get location details ready before calling. Keep phone handy at all times for when they ring back. 

And perhaps above all don't solo on your own on sandy/snappy rock at height.

Quite so.  The future 'enshitification' of W3W is basically their business plan, they just need to get a big enough 'market share' dependent on it first before they start rolling out the adverts and subscription fees.

An emergency control room should really be able to grok somebody's location in any recognisable format - lat/long, grid reference, postcode, W3W, whatever.  But really, in this day and age, it's ridiculous that they even have to ask someone's location if they're talking to them on a GPS-enabled smartphone.

Besides always posting the video above on threads like this, I always mention ULC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code
It's specifically designed to do exactly the same thing as W3W but without the central gimmick or (most of) the drawbacks, it's open source and it's built-in to Google Map, so almost everybody with a smartphone already has the app installed. 
(Google invented it, but since they've made it open source and there's no possibility of monetising it in future they have no interest in promoting it unfortunately.)

To get the ULC for your location on Google Map, open the map, press the 'blue dot', scroll down to the bottom of the 'your location' box and there it is under "Plus Code".  No data connection or mobile signal required.

I find it very questionable how a commercial organisation has managed to wheedle its way into so many control centre GIS solutions.

Sorry, the threat was reasonably long already and I was being lazy.

d'oh! I meant Streetmap

https://www.streetmap.co.uk/idgc?x=471321&y=174026

OS X (Eastings) 471321
OS Y (Northings) 174026
Nat Grid SU713740 / SU7132174026
Nearest Post Code RG1 8AJ
Lat (WGS84) N51:27:39 (51.460725427442874)
Long (WGS84) W0:58:29 (-0.9747992720330101)
Lat,Long (WGS84) 51.460725427442874,-0.9747992720330101
Lat (OSGB36) N51:27:37 (51.460222773924755)
Long (OSGB36) W0:58:24 (-0.9732911762894314)
Lat,Long (OSGB36) 51.460222773924755,-0.9732911762894314
what3words loads.chained.eating
Open Loc/Plus code 9C3XF26G+73W

No apology necessary; we were in total agreement...

I've spent a few hundred hours on the phone to monopoly service providers (i.e. services which are not allowed to have competition, though in my instance, not emergency service-related) over the past few months and in most cases, there is a very, very limited remit of the person answering the phone. As soon as you get outside their script by the tiniest distance you encounter some variety of "computer says no" human error code. I don't know if it's a product of training or recruitment but it doesn't crop up nearly as often in companies that have competition. Where there is competition, the person you speak to usually has the latitude or gumption to engage you in a normal conversation and look at a variety of solutions.

Also, it is predictably the case that the larger the organisation, the greater the probability that the person you are speaking to isn't able to actually do anything, and the ambulance service is basically the NHS, which I assume is the largest organisation in the whole country.

I don't much know about the ambulance service; but mountain rescue do understand grid references and more likely than not it'll be the MRT coming for users of this site

If you know to call 999, ask for the Police, and then ask for Mountain Rescue.

From this thread, it appears that this is new information for some.

Quite why the Ambulance Service isn't integrated into MRT, or MRT isn't directly integrated into the 999 service is another question. Or two questions...

Yeah, I would have assumed everyone knew that by now!

It's done through the Police as technically it's a missing person case - yes even when said person knows where they are and is injured!

The Police do have a lot more leeway with using things like SARLOC or phone triangulation than the ambulance service do.

I did know it, but in the heat of the moment all I could think of is I wanted to be in an ambulance! To be honest I panicked a bit, i was probably in shock. No I was definitely shock!

Luckily for me the ambulance handler saw where I was and called MR. I guess W3W worked but I was on the phone for ages trying to spell the words thinking I wish I had the GR.

Again, why...?

Yeah, I can totally sympathise with that.

Heat of the moment is a tricky time to make decisions that's for sure!

I don't see the point in those. It's absolutely not the answer for this situation. Which is easier to memorise and read to the emergency services over the phone? 9C3XF26G+73W or SU713740?

Don't know about you but I've no chance with the ulc. It'll only ever be any use for copy/paste use cases, when decimal coords would work just fine.

Edit: for context, this is how many decimal places you need: https://xkcd.com/2170/

Yes! But.. this only works for a specific set of circumstances (app installed, phone pre-registered, someone choosing to text rather than call). There's a broad range of scenarios where this simply wouldn't happen, and based on the anecdotes I know it seems that the call handlers don't ever try nudge people in this direction—certainly from the OPs experience it seems they just keep trying W3W even when hearing the words correctly is an issue.

My point was meant to be much more general though. When designing any system, it's useful to think about these "near miss" error conditions and how to prevent or detect them. When sending a grid reference, a single digit error could give a grid that appears correct ("yep, that's on Ben Nevis") but sends the MRT to wrong side of the mountain. When sending a bank transfer, a single digit error could mean my money goes to a random person instead of the handsome Nigerian Prince I'm trying to help out of a sticky situation. IBAN numbers and credit card numbers solve this with check digits (yet I still haven't heard back the Prince since I sent the first donation to help him get back on his feet). W3W is actually good in this regard ("hold on, you said you're on Ben Nevis, but those words point me to Lagos"), but it's a shame there so many other flaws—the biggest flaws of course being their commercial model, and their reliance on English. Plus Codes has some measures to make them easier to read and communicate over the phone, but they made the design decision that similar Plus Codes would point to similar locations. 

You can also think about this even more generally: how do we detect small errors not just in numbers, but in anything? For example, how do we magnify small, near invisible faults in equipment so that are easily detected by the user? There's things like pop-stitching and other impact indicators, but I don't believe we generally have those on climbing equipment. The red marker on some Petzl screwgates, and the markings on some double-back harness buckles, are a couple of small example of making consequential mistakes more obvious. It's also one of the reasons why indoors walls prefer you to use figure-8 knots, as it makes it easier for their staff to spot a mistied knot. 

Anyway, I'm rambling. I think ebdon nailed it in the thread title, and all words written after that have been unnecessary.

Hmm... If I ignore all the times I've phoned because of a shootout or pub brawl and limit it to climbing/walking related activities, 2 out of the 4 times I can remember have been so close to the road, I really just wanted an ambulance to arrive as it would come a lot quicker than MR and paramedics have no trouble walking a couple of hundred metres to the casualty. And I'd say that my climbing is a lot more adventurous and isolated on average than most UKC members (though I'm prepared to be corrected).

I think you might find that, contrary to intuition, most climbing accidents happen so close to the road that an ambulance is actually the best option.

Four King Words (https://www.fourkingmaps.co.uk/) has some of the same flaws, but based on four words it's actually a bit better structured. Pitty what-3 didn't use a 4 word system. Obviously mentioning 4 K in humour not as a serious alternative.

The issue isn't whether you or I (or a call handler) find OS grid ref better (which I do) but the average "person in the street" would get confused at the best of times let alone during a high-stress situation. What 3 words may be a lesser evil than not using it, for non outdoors people anyway

Edit: get well soon!

It might be just a sample of one, but the one time I was involved in a climbing accident (Scout Crag, Langdale - so not that far from the road) the ambulance wouldn't come up Langdale and the MR Land Rover had to ferry the casualty down to Ambleside before transferring him to the ambulance. I have no idea who made the call, but I thought at the time that it was sub-optimal given likely (and actual) spinal injuries.

Either way, I think the best plan-of-action (in the hills) is to always phone 999 Police and get them to organise MR or ambulance as required.

I'm not suggesting everyone needs to learn how to use 6 fig grid references, it's more a case of if they are going to send you a link to read 6 numbers is easier to read then 3 words IMHO. Perhaps my dyslexia is biasing me though!

That ship has sailed it seems, and for the moment at least it's neither - the UK ambulance service wants you to tell them where you are using W3W.  I love a good argument, but I'm not committed enough to get into this one with a 999 operator while I'm bleeding profusely and have a broken leg.

Neither is great to memorise, and pretty obviously it would be better for an emergency operator trying to locate someone using the phone they're talking on to not be relying on either.  They should be bypassing the caller and getting that directly from the phone remotely the way they already do in other, more sensible, countries in the 21st century.

Or failing that, if they must ask the person to get involved maybe just send them a SARLOC text message (or equivalent) and ask them to click the link in it.

But fwiw you're not comparing like to like there - your 'Plus Code' specifies quite a precise location globally as opposed to a 100m x 100m square within the national grid.

If you know you're somewhere near Reading you can drop the first 4 characters.  And the precision is much more like a 10-figure grid reference than a 6-figure one.  So a fairer comparison would be "F26G+73W Reading" vs "SU7132974026".

The Plus Code is clearly better to read across the phone - it has a limited character set specifically chosen to minimise confusion over a voice connection.

I'm not saying it is "the answer", nor that there is an answer.  I'm just saying it's a better system made to do the exact same job that W3W claim their system is designed for*.  Also it's open source, and a huge percentage of smartphone users already have the app installed.

*(Which, incidentally, is not emergency use - W3W just lean heavily into that for promotional/PR purposes.  And it's obviously a bit of a coup for them that they've successfully got the UK emergency services to fall for the hype.)

The main advantage to OLC though, it seems to me, is that the app is already installed.  Flag down a random person an the street and ask to borrow their phone - do they have W3W installed?  Maybe.  Do they have 'OS Locate' or Arthur Embleton's excellent little Grid Reference app?  Unlikely.  Do they have Google Map?  Yes they probably do.

Mind you - they definitely have a web browser.  And as pointed out above, if you have a data connection you can visit streetmap.co.uk on your web browser on a smartphone and within a couple of clicks have your location on the screen as lat/long, postcode, OS grid-ref, W3W and OLC.

If you just need a W3W address you can visit what3words.com using a web browser.  The complete and utter batshit insanity of 999 operators asking people on dodgy connections with limited battery life to actually install the app is absolutely mind-boggling.

The issue is that they should be able to use any provided, reasonable location reference, rather than insisting on just one proprietary, monopolistic, commercial system.

For domestic callouts, postcode & house number are perfectly reasonable. And most callouts are probably domestic.

For non-domestic urban callouts, the caller ("person in the street") is unlikely to know the postcode, so street name, junction, etc might be expected. Or some reference system, be that OSGB, W3W, 4K, lat/long, Google, etc.

If a free mapping website can do it (Streetmap), it's a disgrace that the emergency services GIS can't do it.

Just another anecdote to throw into the pot: a couple of years back I was the first person to a climber who fell descending steep ground at Stanage.  Horrible to see, and the climber lost consciousness for some time, then was groaning and not making much sense. Fortunately, it turned out there were no serious injuries and the climber made a full recovery within weeks but that seemed unlikely the moment I phoned 999. I asked for police for mountain rescue. The woman I spoke to in the control room (South Yorks accent I think, so I guessed the control room might have been Sheffield but I don't know) had no idea what Stanage was or where it was, but had no problem letting me spell it out, and then tell her what named climbing routes we were near to and what sector of the crag we were on, hence which parking was nearest. I had OS on my phone so I suppose I could have given her a grid ref, but she didn't ask for that (or W3W), she might have asked first for a post code, but seemed to get why I suspected there wasn't one for a cliff! I think I told her that the mountain rescue team would be able to easily find us with the info I had given her, and she seemed perfectly happy with that. I was immensely relieved when- and impressed by how quickly- the swarm of red helmeted Edale MRT members started popping up striding up through the bracken towards us. I'm still not convinced that a bunch of them don't just live in the bracken forest and sprout for call-outs, like mushrooms after rain. They were fantastic and soon had the climber packed on the stretcher, receiving pain relief and loaded on the ambulance that was waiting in Plantation car park. 

So, from my limited experience, police control room call handlers seem perfectly ready to listen to you tell them what they (and therefore MRT) need to know. I appreciate when you are also the casualty, thinking through all this will be massively harder! Totally see why Ebdon would have just thought - "get me an ambulance please!"

I disagree, a simple phone app can give an accurate 6fig (or more) grid reference, absolutely no need to read a map or understand coordinates - all the average user needs to do is read out the eight characters, that's easier and quicker than spelling out three words.

They should also know that's is easy to convert an OS grid ref into W3W through the W3W app. So regardless of what system the caller uses, they can give it the their emergency responder in the preferred format.

w3w is handy in that you can go straight into Google maps - I'm somewhat shocked that Google maps appears to be the polices preferred system for everything.

Reading out grid references, or really any chain of numbers is very difficult for me and I stand a far better chance of being able to read out Star.lowest.seats correctly than a string of numbers.  String of numbers just seem to jumble themselves up as I try to read them.

Yes, as anyone who reads my posts on here has probably picked up, I'm dyslexic.

I know everyone here hates it, but for me it's a better system and it's probably more inclusive for others.

Frankly reading out a long string of numbers whilst I'm lying injured would be absolutely impossible, I wouldn't even try. 

I think we need to have a woke off 😉 I'm also dyslexic and nearly said something about numbers being more inclusive! 

Ha!  

I think what a lot of people don't understand (and given you're a sufferer too, this isn't aimed at you as I'm sure you already know this) there are a number of different types of dyslexia which can afflict people in different ways... 

I think that it's technically called discalculia when it's numbers - which I absolutely have, but I also have issues with words, dates, organisation etc

Have started wondering recently if it's just undiagnosed ADHD.

It was the same when I had to call in to 999 when someone fell at Swanage…I gave the location as bottom of the route Tensor II, Guillemot Ledge, 800m east of Dancing Ledge and they were 100% fine with this…and as in your situation a very fast response. (Just as well because I had to run to the Spyway barn to eventually get a signal)

Why can't/don't the (non volunteer) emergency services use sarloc?

From what I understand it's an incredibly powerful tool that could save lots of time in all number of situations.

so if you had only voice/text  without internet access, what use would the link be?

given voice contact you can pass a grid without access to the internet

Would they just put the phone down on you?

I had that problem all through my school life but never had a problem with grid references except remembering (early on) which way round they go.

Despite not being great with numbers I found the trick is to write groups of three or four and read in a rhythm

Ridiculous.

Hope that you are OK.

No use I guess! I suppose 90% of calls they get are from people with signal. My plan b was to get the guide book and describe the location from that (the new NYM one uses W3W for parking) . I've no idea what would have happened if I had tried to give them a grid ref. They may well have coped admirably?

My experience suggests otherwise. Several years ago I arrived at the Roaches Lower Tier to find that someone had decked, fortunately from not too high but he was lying awkwardly on some rocks and complaining about his back, so we didn't want to move him.  His mate had already called an ambulance. We saw it arrive at the roadside parking and watched a very unfit medic puff and pant his way up the hill - when he arrived he looked more in need of first aid than the casualty. When he'd recovered his breath he put the casualty on a spinal board, but wouldn't have been able to get him down to the ambulance if there hadn't been several of us around to help.

I came away with the clear impression that the ambulance service can't easily cope without a smooth flat surface which can accommodate trolleys and wheelchairs. They don't seem to be equipped to move casualties more than a short distance without these, especially if additional assistance is not available. I don't know what information had been passed on about the nature and location of the accident, but this one seemed particularly poorly equipped for the task.

On another occasion, following an accident at Troy Quarry which is also not too far from the road we very quickly had a large and well-equipped team there from the local Mountain Rescue team.

Yeah that's the only way I can remember phone numbers, if somebody says my own phone number back to me with the numbers in different groupings it seems wrong to me.  My own phone number (which I've had for over 20 years) is the only one I know off by heart.*

Don't know my partner's.  She's had the same one for the 17 years we've been together.  That's bad that isn't it?

I think that's normal these days since you rarely have to dial an actual number as opposed to just choosing a name off a list.

I don't know my wife's, we've been together 18 years (fortunately somehow she finds this charming). I only know mine and my parents, sometimes being dyslexic is rubbish.

Difficulty reading numbers seems to be called dysnumeria, though some lump it under dyscalculia. I found that out today...

Wasn't suggesting that people would read a map and a phone app is expected, but don't underestimate how 8 (or 10 numbers) would confuse more people  than the weird words of what 3 words, although I'm not dysnumeric, I'm bumping into people who are all the time (and/or dyscalculia too)

I’d say yes 30 years ago - but totally normal now. I only know my phone number and mum and dads home one - that’s it. Everything else is just a name on my phone.

I was just wondering the circumstances where the casualty was so disabled that the couldn't walk to the road to meet the ambulance in the first place but could when the 2 ambulance crew arrive and walk up to them (a DCA wont be carrying them!  ... so they probably didnt need an ambo anyway!)...if they are climbing injured almost always will need a stretcher carry either for the injury or for the mechanism of injury. 
I'm not sure where you are but here for sure (in the Peak) MR will pretty much always get to have dealt with the cas before an ambulance and that includes those where there is a 45 minute delay from the control room to us getting the call.
 

Sarloc was originally developed by a fella in Oggie team about 15 years and got integrated into the MR software suite as PhoneFind. I seem to recall some police forces adopting it as SarLoc but I can imagine its an odd bit of software to add into a sophisticated police IT system for a very low level use.This and I think even though it was developed and is free for MR there might have been some ...'for commercial use' liscensing issues

Thankyou, yes I knew it was initially developed by one MR team and then (as I understand) adopted by all.

It's just really interesting talking to friends who work in a call centre answering 999 calls that aren't even aware of its existence and who promote W3W as the 'best' way to report your location. Even texting a link to callers so they can download the app in order to give out their location.

I'm a recent incident my friend took a call about someone in distress near the 'castle' at a local reservoir. He immediately went on his phone and pulled up the W3W location to give to the crews on the ground the correct location - yep, all that high tech software and he was using his personal phone to pull up the app.

Would sarloc be low use? I can see it being very handy in all sorts of incidents (not least car accidents), also I would hope that MRT would not be greedy and if they were approached by emergency services for a licence wouldn't make it prohibitively expensive.

If you put the grid ref into the search of W3W it will give you the W3W location. You can also set W3W to display the grid ref alongside the words.

my friend in the police was unaware of this and previously told me that they were unable to use grid references in the call centre (they have now been educated!).

Three words can give you Lats and Longs if you change your settings

I had a similar experience at Burbage, when we called 999 they had no idea what it was or where it was and they said they would be able to send anybody, certainly no time soon anyways she said. We had to carry my friend with a really badly fractured leg in 3 places back to my van and drove him to A&E. I'm not sure why every accident I've been involved in the UK the rescue services have been pretty shambles.

How accurately the network provider can locate your phone depends a lot on density of cell towers. If only one tower can "see" your phone, which is quite likely out in the sticks, then they can tell which of the three 120° sectors covered by that tower you're in, and "near" or "far" over a range of potentially a few miles.  So not really enough precision to be of much use.

In cities (and TV shows) you can get much higher precision by triangulating from multiple towers.

(Source: not an expert but I work for a mobile network company & have had conversations on the subject with people who are experts)

What I'm not sure about: emergency calls work on any network, which might increase the chances of your phone being "visible" to multiple towers even in remote areas. In which case the emergency services might be able to triangulate across different networks. But afaik the individual network companies can't

I assume things like SARLOC are ways of allowing remote access to the phone's GPS, rather than trying to locate purely from the cellular network?

That's why when you dial 999 / 112, you ask for Police and then Mountain Rescue. It's easy to think that if someone is injured that the point of contact would be 'the Ambulance Service'.

Mountain Rescue will render immediate first aid and summon an ambulance/helicopter as required.

As far as I know it’s generally because ambulance call centres typically have very little knowledge about search and rescue. I was helping run a uni climbing club and our training always instructed to call 999, ask for the police, and ask the police for mountain rescue, rather than the very reasonable assumption than that we should ask for an ambulance. I’ve had to call MRT a couple of times, at Curbar and Ogwen, and it was thankfully painless through the police.

You dialled 999 and asked for an ambulance presumably?
(As opposed to asking for police and then telling them you needed mountain rescue?)

Presumably you've not been paying much attention to current affairs then.  The UK ambulance service is absolutely on its knees, like the rest of the NHS really (and just about everything else in the public sector - fire service and the police included).  The fact that it kinda sorta still works at all is really only thanks to the extraordinary tenacity of the people working there.  Ambulances and paramedics routinely spend hours (and hours!) waiting outside hospital A&E departments looking after a patient in the back of the van, which obviously has a severe knock-on effect if you happen to need one elsewhere.  (Especially if yours is not a 'category-1' call, which a broken leg ordinarily wouldn't be.)

anyone know what happens with a text sent to 999 from a registered phone? Do you need to specify in the message Police>MR to avoid it ending up with ambulance service?

I did this and had to be quite forceful with the call handler (Derbyshire, so you'd think they would be used to call outs) about what I needed. Phone signal was terrible, so I was prioritising location which clearly didn't follow their script of how an emergency call should progress, especially as all I had was a grid reference.

Yes we got the help we needed, but for someone unsure of the protocol I can see it being very easy to get through to the 'wrong' emergency service.

Shortly after I got a call back from the mrt, gave a 6fig grid ref and they immediately asked if that was Derwent edge, I confirmed and then told them the rock outcrop we were sheltering by. I needed to give a couple of other locations and again I gave a 6fig grid refs (all taken by eye off the map) and when they asked if that was "x" I was able to confirm and use descriptions to pinpoint the location.

Ok I'm very confident with gris refs, but the simplicity with which they were able to locate my approximate location and then pinpoint with a description of terrain was seamless.

Good question, police 101* and 999 go through to the same call handlers.

Will ask my friend about texts, but suspect they go to the police who will redirect the info as appropriate.

* Anyone else totally unable to remember if it's 101 or 111 and have to Google every time to check which is police and which NHS?

This makes me feel a little better!

1) Ambulance service regional call centres (eg for Cumbria, call centre is near Preston) deal with an incredibly high volume of work. The vast, vast majority of these calls are from straight forward addresses and the system works well for those. However, calls out in the countryside away from roads are generally not always dealt with well. Often there will not be a recognition that other services (eg MR) will be needed until later in the job cycle, which will introduce delay. As alluded to above, even a short carry over rough ground needs more resources than an ambulance plus 2 crew can provide. 

2) Paramedics come in all shapes and sizes, some will venture far from the vehicle to attend when safe to do so (I once ended up at an incident at sprinkling tarn in my ambulance uniform....) but others don't have any confidence or experience of the hills and will wait at the roadside for the casualty to be delivered.

3) Police control rooms, being county based, generally deal better with the local knowledge and resource allocation needed and, as mentioned frequently above, are the best route to get MRT, via 999-police-mountain rescue. Recently, location info of the caller's phone is often available in the initial call (I think due to a legislative or tech change that allows this?) usefully with an error range (for example lat long +/- 50m).

4) As much location info as can be provided is helpful. When we (MR) get the call from police or ambulance we will generally send a phone find text to the callers phone, asking for a link to be clicked. The most common reason for this to fail initially is privacy settings preventing the sharing of location data, which needs the user to go in to settings to allow this. We also ring the caller direct, which allows someone with very good local knowledge to establish exactly what is needed and where, using as much info as the caller is able to give- grid ref, w3w, lat long can all be used, but will try to 'triangulate' to improve accuracy- eg grid ref, description of route plan, known nearby features etc. While this conversation with MR is going on the team have been paged and will be on their way to base and preparing for deployment.

5) We have learnt that w3w as a single data point has generally been unreliable, with several locations in a nearby (so plausible) but significantly wrong place. We believe sometimes this is due to the app not having updated to the current location, but also words get mangled/pluralised/near homophones given etc. 

Hope this helps?

You MUST make a complaint, and as a matter of fact I'd say that unless improvements are made there will be unnecessarily bad outcomes for people in trouble.  To force someone to do something which is going to result in a slower transmission of your location to the emergency services than what you were able to do is utterly negligent.  You could have passed out, or the call could have dropped before you'd managed to give them your position information.  It is FAR better to get whatever information you have out of you as fast as possible. They can always replay the call and/or transcode an OS reference into w3w for themselves afterwards.

Tom, do you happen to know if Police coordinate lowland search and rescue teams in same way as MR teams?

gonna work out how to check privacy/location sharing settings, thanks for the tip on that! 

We've noticed this behaviour in training i.e. the location being in the general region but not the correct location until you press the target icon. However I cannot for the life of me recreate it sat at home. You can knock the screen and it will give the coords for that point rather than your GPS location but it generally loads with the map fairly zoomed in so not sure if that's the issue or not.

It all depends on the phone, network, and nation.  Some useful phone info:-

1) All networks know which antenna the phone is on, and the range from the antenna. Most antennas are sectored (e.g. covering a 120degree arc), but there are still omnidirectional ones, especially out in the styx where there aren't enough users to warrant a sectored antenna.

2)Some networks transmit that information to the 999 callcentre automatically, some don't - it will depend on what has been set up in the country. Equally, the callcentre needs to be set up to deal with it - it needs to know where the masts are, and which way the sectors are pointing.  For example, in the Channel islands that information is not sent automatically.

3) some phones can send their position information from their GPS to the network if it is turned on. If it's turned off or the phone doesn't have GPS you're back to the information in (1).

4) Triangulation. Phones know what antennas they can 'see' in order to facilitate handing over between them.  I don't know if that list of antenna info is routinely sent in (2), or if an engineer would have to manually interrogate the network. I don't know if they can do it historically, or if they can only take a live snapshot.  I don't know if 'banned' networks would be included. I will ask the question of the engineers driving our mobile network sat behind me when they're off their conference call they're on.

5) Emergency calls will route over the best network available if the user's own network isn't good enough. If the user's own network signal is poor but still able to handle calls (even if they drop out or speech quality is rubbish) the phone may NOT roam onto an alternative network which would give good quality service.

6) You can make emergency calls from a phone without a working SIM in it e.g. no SIM at all, or no credit, or outgoing calls barred due to exceeding roaming spend limits etc., or no agreement for service between your network provider and a roaming network provider.  However, the problem is that the phone cannot receive calls or texts (because there is no phone number registered on the networks, so the 999 operator cannot call you back if the call drops. They cannot send you a SARLOC text. They cannot quickly get engineers to investigate things.  So don't use an old phone handset as your emergency phone!

7) be careful using mapping/ fitness apps like Komoot and Strava on your phone for extended periods of time e.g. a day in the mountains - it's easy to flatten your battery too much to have enough left to deal with an emergency late in the day.

No, the main flaw is actually that w3w can provide a location that's near enough to your actual location that is believable, yet not in the right place and causes much delay.

https://www.grough.co.uk/magazine/2022/08/31/dont-rely-solely-on-what3words...

Tests have been done and demonstrate that in many parts of the world a minor error in a w3w word e.g. 'biscuit' instead of 'biscuits', 'hear' instead of 'here' results in a position within a couple of kilometres of the correct one.

No this is my experience in rescues over the last 10 years or so in UK. We didn't ask for anything in particular, we explained the situation and the person on the other end of the line was sort of helpful and sort of clueless at the same time. Realising we could be there for hours and having had disappointing experiences with rescues before we thought it would be faster to get the casualty out ourselves. Obvs that was only because it was only a badly broken leg and a very brave young man, if it was anyhing more serious we would have waited for rescue.

Some very useful information on this thread. 

First, an observation. Different people on the thread make perfectly good cases for various location systems and so I think whatever single method the emergency services chose to use would find some critics. However, what seems unforgivable to me is that the emergency services are not ready to accept location data in whatever form they're presented it, and deal with the conversion between different coordinate systems at their end, rather than leaving that to the casualty.

Secondly a question. Just so I know what to expect, who do I actually end up speaking to if I call 999 - police - MRT? Am I patched straight through to some sort of MRT control room? To a local MRT team leader? Or do the police take my information and I might expect a call from a local MRT team later? Anyone who's been through the process, or work in the field, able to comment?

I had the 'pleasure' to be involved in an incident last summer where some of my scouts got themselves lost and benighted in the New Forest 🙄. The police hunting them were all using w3w and googlemaps and it was abysmal.

1) it took a long time for w3w locations to be passed between police on the ground, the 999 control centre, and the helicopter - many requests for spelling confirmations, and these were people used to using it.

2) Googlemaps doesn't have decent footpath / terrain mapping so policemen were literally navigating 'as the crow flies' through bogs and woodlands in the dark.

It's a pretty disappointing state of affairs really.

If only we had a government-funded National Mapping Agency who could provide detailed maps and an app...

The thing is, w3w is, on the face of it, really cool and simple. No need for anyone to learn and understand grid references or lat/longs. No need to worry about having the correct datum set for your lats&longs. Just pump the words into the app/website or read them off it and off you go.  Stick the words on your business advertising. Much easier to read dogs.window.sunflower off a billboard and feed it into your device than 49.495786234 -2.28478694. It's same reason businesses pay for nice memorable phone numbers.  Most of the population don't understand navigation and positioning systems, all they want is something simple.  Thus anyone needing to deal with most of the population, and whose 'customers' tend to be from the less-smart end of the population pool is going to use w3w.  Even though it has limitations it's better for more people. 

The first thing you are asked for is 'which service: police, ambulance or fire'. So you must have asked for one of those, in particular.

But it is very poor that the ambulance service call handlers aren't able to recognise the need to call other assets, such as MRT.

This may be because the official route to MRT is via the police, so 'the system' can't cope with any deviation from the 'official route'. Some pragmatism is required; ambulance service already liaises with police service, so maybe the call could be transferred to the police, then to MRT.

One thing to remember is that guidebooks usually have advice on what to do and who to call in an emergency. The guide will (hopefully) give coordinates of the crag and perhaps the name of the cliff known by, say, the coastguard which may be different from how it's known by climbers.

There also may be advice specific to a crag - for example at Shorncliff, the advice is to ask for Gloucestershire police (I can't remember the exact details) to coordinate the rescue as it's possible to get a vehicle along the forestry track.

I don't know whether apps such as Rockfax have this info.

A numeric reference has the same problem. The disambiguation caused by using unrelated words is about the only benefit of W3W.

Maybe machine-generated grid refs could have an alpha check character appended to them...

I'm MRT in N Wales.  Our Sarcall system has now got built in algorithms to help with our interpretations of W3W.   As has been mentioned we very often do our own phonefind/Sarloc to ensure we have a correct location,  as W3W particularly has been problematic.  There are other ways of working out where people are but they're a lot slower (eg photos, location descriptions etc)

re calling 999,  even if you request MRT,  then the MRT coordinator will contact you.  You don't contact them.  There is likely to be some decision making going on at the Control Centre in the background  - eg which team covers the location you're supposed to be at.

The appalling thing is, though, that call centre GIS has been in use for a couple of decades, long before W3W was even thought about. And yet never seems to have been able to accept the National Grid Reference as location; postcode or address seems to have been the only thing I have been asked for. I have been explicitly told they cannot handle GRs when I have offered them.

As I said above, this is fine for most urban calls, but the system really ought to be able to accept alternative location formats.

Indeed.  But most of the population aren't setting up or managing an emergency services control room.  You would very much hope that it isn't someone from the "less-smart end of the population pool" doing that!  (In vain, it seems.)

Absolutely nobody on this thread is complaining about emergency services using W3W when it's appropriate to do.  What some of us are complaining about, and rightly so, is their apparent inability in many cases to use anything else.  Even to the point of actually refusing to accept accurate, valid and vital information in a different format.

Good knowledge, thanks

We retain signalling data - the handshakes between phones and towers - for seven days, which as long as our local data protection regs allow

Informative, thanks.

999 ask for police

Tell the police you need MRT. They will ask lots of questions, personally I think location is the most important thing to tell them first (incase you lose phone signal), then follow their script. 

Stay put, you have a phone signal so don't move.

Someone from MRT called me back off their mobile, they asked many of the same questions but also details like what clothing we had.

From then on all contract was direct with MRT who were totally professional.

After the incident I was asked to call the police and update that we were all gone and well. Problem 2 is that home was in a different region to the incident (Sheffield is S.Yorks police, Peak District Derbyshire), so I went through to the 'wrong' team.

Thanks, that's helpful. I'm a sailor too, so I think I'd automatically launch into the "script" I learnt for a Mayday call to the coastguard, which begins with position, then flows on with nature of emergency, number of persons etc etc. I think I'd be a bit thrown if I was interrupted before I got to the end of my pre-programmed spiel!!

In my experience of doing my bit standing around in the rain, carrying stretchers etc (in the last century!) you speak to the police who take details and call the MR duty controller.  They may pass your call on directly, but more likely you may be told to await a call back (and keep your line clear for MR and police).  This was the Peak District, where the umbrella PDMRO ran a rota of duty controllers (wise, grey haired, could visualise the whole Peak District without a map etc), so there was alway someone to take the initial call 24/7, make an initial assessment and get things moving.  I don't know if it still works like this (happy to be corrected), and I don't know how other areas work.  For example, somewhere like Llanberis MRT might have someone ready on base on a Bank Holiday weekend for the inevitable call via the police. But AFAIK there isn't a countrywide or regional 24/7 MRT control room.  

See https://www.ukhillwalking.com/articles/skills/series/rescue/calling_in_a_mo...  Take a minute to get your basic info sorted in your head (or on paper) before calling, so you don't burble randomly.  Where are you, who are you, what's happened, casualty details, situation details, what do you need?

But note this comment in https://www.ukhillwalking.com/articles/skills/series/simple_items_that_migh...:  "More crawling, and then my phone rang. It was the police, following up the unclear 999 call and 999 text messages. The officer was in Edinburgh and not familiar with the area I was in but was trying his best to work out what to do and what MRT to send, asking me if Torridon or Dundonnell was nearer."

So if you're in Scotland, may be worth having a handle on where the nearest MRT might be coming from.  

Finally there's a BBC programme (iPlayer) about rescues in Eryri. Without going into TV review mode, this has snippets of what seem to be the real voice calls asking for help, ranging from the excellent ("I need mountain rescue.  We are a party of 4 descending <route> and <this> has happened") to the less than excellent ("er, um, me mate's stuck on a mountain in Wales").

Here's a thing..

https://eena.org/our-work/eena-special-focus/advanced-mobile-location/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Location

AML is a system that was originally invented and trialled in the UK ten years ago. 

The idea is that when a smartphone is used to make an emergency call the phone switches on its wifi & GPS (if it isn't already on), gets a fix on its location, and sends that location to the emergency control room handling the call in an SMS message.  The person making the call doesn't have to do anything - the phone does it automatically while they're making the call.

From the phone manufacturers' end, this has already been implemented on every Android phone since 2016 (Android version 2.3.7 Gingerbread onwards) and every iPhone since 2018.  And there was an EU directive requiring EU member states to have it implemented by the end of 2020.  (Yay - just what this thread needs, a Brexit angle!)

According to the link above though, it has already been fully implemented in the UK as well as throughout the EU.  Which rather begs the question - what the feck is going on?

Was that police or ambulance? Presumably ambulance? because if the police had called out MRT, half the Edale MRT landrovers and SUVs are kept in the pub carpark at Owler Bar and that's ten minutes from Burbage. 

Ironic - in that they are only people involved in the entire process who aren't being paid for their work!  

https://www.fourkingmaps.co.uk/

Oh christ this is so puerile, my text conversations with friends have are now taking much longer but are much funnier. 

Do you often find yourself talking over the phone as if you're using a VHF radio?

"Mum, Mum, Mum, this is Patrick, Patrick, Patrick.  Happy Birthday.  How are you?  Over."

I overheard the Coastguard's end of a 'Mayday' conversation a couple of years ago, couldn't hear the caller at all and apparently the Coastguard were really struggling to make out what they were saying too. 

More or less the first thing the Coastguard asked them was whether they had a phone (apparently they did), and then whether it had a signal (yep) - and then it took them a surprisingly long time after that to persuade the person to stop talking on the radio, pick up the phone, dial 999 and ask for the Coastguard instead.

I asked the same question above, Ramon said:
"We didn't ask for anything in particular, we explained the situation and the person on the other end of the line was sort of helpful and sort of clueless at the same time."

Not used What3Words in anger but downloaded the app to see where a tree had been planted for me in Scotland. Tried to establish the w3w address for our property in Suffolk by standing by the front door - the words kept changing. On this basis, to get a definite fix it should only be necessary to move a few metres to get at least half a dozen combinations of 3 words that apply a decent redundancy factor - who cares if the rescue team turn up 10 metres away?

Get well soon!

Location based on TDOA for three base stations has been around even longer...

The mechanisms are there, and built in to the infrastructure.

As you say; what the feck is going on?

Yeah saw that. I might be misremembering but I'm pretty certain you get given a choice of the three services. When I called from Stanage I think I said "Police for mountain rescue" and the call handler said something like "police then" and put me through - presumably they don't need to know why you are asking for the police. I guess if you said my friend has broken his leg and not specify the 999 handler will put you through to ambulance and then you have issues. I had to call 999 for ambulance not too long ago (in the midst of the crisis two winters back), and I was worried the person wasn't breathing properly, so I think that prioritised it and the ambulance came quickly - probably under 10 minutes to a residential address. But I guess if you say broken limb, that puts you down the priority list.

My take away from this is that if you need mountain rescue you absolutely need to get put through from 999 to the police! Ask for the police specifically seems to be the key.

I believe the coastguard for example used to have access to such beast, but now get a 3rd party app that offers viewing of OS maps (quite well) but doesn't allow you to search by OS grid reference.

I would hope that the control rooms have access to everything. Certainly, initial pages from them tend to contain OS grid references by default so at least one service understands them, even if the people receiving the message can't directly look up the coordinates they have been sent..

You can hope if you like...

But plenty of people (me included) have direct experience of control centres for Police and Ambulance explicitly saying they cannot accept OSGB GRs; they have no means of entering them into their system.

My hope is that, in the three years since my last experience, this has changed. Though I suspect they have just added W3W, and not OSGB.

ah yes, my message was ambiguous. I was referring to coastguard control rooms, which as far as I know send out tasking messages containing OS grid references so I would assume that the coastguard control room understand them (even though the app provided to volunteers does not seem to).

I would also HOPE that every other control room would understand them as getting accurate location information is so critical to most of these kind of calls, and also the phone network must "know" with a reasonable degree of certainty the location of the caller as this has been technically possible for longer than I have been alive - although I have heard that GDPR and the caller's "rights" being a barrier to this information being made available to the control rooms is one potential hurdle. 

Can't say anyone I dealt with wasn't professional, just highlighting that despite being unpaid volunteers mrt was anything but amateurish.

Edale MRT coordinated an incredibly slick and well organised response, bringing in the neighbouring Woodhead team to provide boots on the ground (their own team were already busy with several other incidents).

I think we're all rounding on violently agreeing with each other here; call handlers should have the means to interpret osgb and understand what it is. 

Is this something we could ask the BMC to push?

Yes, a broken limb would be a category-2 call, if the casualty is not breathing properly that's a category-1 for sure.

And it's not unreasonable really for a 999 call-handler left to make the "which service do you require" decision for the caller to fail to realise that "he's fallen and broken his leg" needed Mountain Rescue if that person had no idea where/what Burbage is.

This thread has really surprised me a bit that awareness of this among climbers isn't nearly as ubiquitous as I thought.  I thought (almost) everybody knows this.  Climbers anyway.

I'm not sure when I first learned it, I think from my first climbing partner (who was also a bit of a mentor - taught me how to place gear etc.) but then every time I bought a guidebook I was keen enough to read it from cover to cover and this advice is in all the guidebooks! (Except the ones where you need the Coastguard instead of Mountain Rescue.)

And then I did my first 'outdoors' first-aid course, so of course it was mentioned there - pretty much what's been said above, that even on the relatively accessible Eastern Edges an NHS paramedic might get to you (they might not), but they'll almost certainly be unable to get the casualty back to the van.

Tasking whom?  Someone working on land presumably?  OS maps are pretty useless on the sea obviously, so I'd have thought lat/long makes more sense in most cases.

I was pretty convinced the Coastguard at least can deal with more or less anything (lat/long GB or Irish grid reference, bearing and range to a landmark, etc.) - it'd be quite disappointing if that's not so.

That last one has taken a bit of a hit quite recently, as Coastguard control rooms have been nationally 'networked' (just last year I think?)

Now when one control room is busy, calls can be passed to a different one.  I was talking to someone on Anglesey last autumn who had put in a call to what he assumed was going to be Holyhead Coastguard and found himself talking to someone in Stornoway who didn't immediately know where South Stack is.

No, I'm pretty sure this is not true.  See my post above - there's actually an EU directive that required member states to have this up and running by the end of 2020, and GDPR wouldn't impede that.  (And the UK was supposedly ahead of the game at one point, so really should have already had it working before Brexit took effect.)

I have seen coastguard tasking messages with an OS reference in the sea, but yes, I assume that only makes sense when close to shore

With regards to the location, I was told that it's not available to the controllers, they have to fill in a form and justify/request it - so it may be technically available in a system somewhere - but not practically available at point of call coming in.  I don't know if that is still the process - and it may be that the telephone company has technically passed the info to the control room but some GDPR or other process means there are hoops to jump through before it can be accessed

This info may be out of date though (or plain wrong!) 

Though this was interesting: https://www.secamb.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/220839-FOI-AML-W3W-ref...

Seems in the south east ambulance service AML is available to the call handler but other methods are preferred. They can handle OS grid references but in the full numeric eastings/northings not in the XX1234546 form more common amongst outdoor users.

I think this is two different things - there's more about both upthread.  Information based on signal-strength triangulation between masts is difficult to access and requires the active cooperation of the people running the mobile network.  But it can potentially be used to locate the source of a call even if the caller doesn't want to be found, even if they're using a 'dumb' phone with no GPS chip or wifi etc.

The "Advanced Mobile Location" system is GPS-based*.  Most of the time a 'smart' phone can locate itself much more accurately than the network can - when the phone is used to call 112/999 it automatically gets a fix on its position using GPS and/or wifi and then sends that to the control room as an SMS message, while the user is making the call. 

The network provider doesn't get involved at all, it's really just the same as the user using an app to find their position and read it out (in whatever format) to the operator, but it happens automatically and seamlessly without the caller needing to do anything.

*(Outdoors anyway - if the phone can't see the GPS satellites it'll try to connect to a wifi network and use that to locate itself instead.)

yes, agree with all of that. The disconnect looks like according to the ambulance FOI request above, it seems like AML location automatically drops into their (admittedly 1980s looking) system which is great - but I believe for the coastguard it does not - and requires a "process" to happen - a form to be filled in. 

If that is correct then it seems it could be made more efficient to the benefit of everyone - but I don't know if that is a system integration issue, a policy / procedure issue, or out of date information.

 It used to be written in every phone box in a mountain / hill area: "For mountain rescue call 999 and ask for the Police".  In phone boxes beside the sea, it read the equivalent for the Coastguard. I guess there's a couple of generations who haven't had this 'public service education' while standing in a phone box waiting to be put through to a girl/boy friend.

That is interesting, thanks.

Weird that it says it's appropriate to use AML when "the Caller is uncertain of their location" but then goes into the detail of how to ask them to provide a 'W3W' location instead under precisely those circumstances. 

But at least they do seem to be making their operators aware that there is no need for anyone to download the app!  (Because every single smartphone on the planet that could possibly run the app already has a web-browser installed that will do the job just fine.)

If they are sending a link to the 'casualty' via SMS for them to open with a web browser, it's a shame it's one that requires them to read back something from the screen, rather than one that sends the information back to the operator automatically.  (Which is precisely how SARLOC works.)

Makes sense.  (Like many of us here I'm old enough that I've used phone boxes a lot, though I've never had to dial 999 from one.)

It seems it isn't necessarily so much not knowing how to call mountain rescue that's the problem in some cases though, so much as not realising that you actually need mountain rescue.

Understandable enough on the popular Gritstone edges like Burbage and Stanage really I suppose, where you can often see (and/or hear) the road close by.  But the Peak District MRT's spend a lot of their time dealing with casualties really close the nearest road, and in severe cases even closer to the nearest place to land a helicopter, precisely because they're usually the only people who can stabilise the casualty in-situ and then safely transport them even that short distance across potentially difficult terrain.

Same. I see it as being up there with “learn to use a map and compass” and “take appropriate clothing/footwear” in terms of essential basic knowledge for heading into the hills. For the average cragging climber it is probably higher up that list than map and compass skills.

Similarly it was something I was taught by early climbing partners and from reading guidebooks, and I’ve done my bit to pass it onto people I’ve introduced to climbing. Although I do err on the side of caution if I’m heading out alone and write it on route cards and make a point of reminding whoever it is who might be calling on my behalf if I don’t return in time. 

Oh that is pathetic; the conversion is utterly trivial (for a computer). Though the numeric reference of the map corners is printed on OS maps.

The US introduced the 'E911' regulation ages ago. It was one of the drivers for the development of low power GNSS chipsets for inclusion into mobile phones.

My son (enthusiastic Scout) has been taught by the Scouts to use W3W as it's quick and easy to do from a phone without a map. He can also use grid refs though, which is what they have to use when navigating. W3W is for when they call because there's an issue, normally they are not allowed to use phones for navigating

FYI...Thats the furthest vehicle to Burbage (nearest of the 3 are 1 at Hathersage and 1 Ringinglow Road)...

Good point Simon - so yes, Ramon must have inadvertently somehow completely bypassed a shout going to MRT considering how close lots of Edale MRT's assets are to Burbage! I live not that far from Owler Bar so go past that car park every time I'm driving or riding out to the Peak hence they're the ones that first come to mind, but I guess there must be similar in lots of other places towards Edale.

Given that it seems a bit of 'awareness raising' is in order, I think it's worth being very direct about this even if it doesn't seem polite.

Ramon didn't get MRT because you don't get them unless you ask for them.  And specifically you need to ask the police for MRT, so you need to ask the 999 operator for police.  Asking them for an ambulance or letting them assume that's what you need won't do it.

But first you need to realise that MRT is what you actually need, which is pretty obvious if you're up a mountain but much less so on the popular gritstone crags like Burbage and Stanage that are barely outside the city and more or less right next to the road.

Thing is though that if you can't get yourself back to the road under your own steam (as Ramon did in the end) and a stretcher needs to be moved across anything but firm, flat, level terrain (and not too much of it) then the chances are an NHS paramedic can't get you there either.

Lots of apps available where you can do exactly the same with a grid ref though -I use OS Locate coz its got other handy stuff too, but there are other apps available which will just give you a quick grid ref

The one advantage of W3W is that you can click in the app and it immediately opens up Google maps. This is very handy when the person wants to use satnav for navigating to a location. Or maybe for a call handler to get a visual idea of your location and therefore know which MRTs area you are in, or if it's nowhere near a road so likely to require MRT rather than just an ambulance.

Edit - just been playing and realised you can get the free OS maps to go straight to Google maps for navigation too.

Just catching up on this thread... You were saying you a busted limb is Cat 2...iits actually cat 3 unless it can get bumped a bit if there is limb threatening compromised circulation. The difference in target response times is significant

CAT1 immediate risk to life e.g. Cardiac arrest 7 mins

CAT2 Emergency e. g. Stroke 19 mins

CAT3 urgent e. g. Busted limb 90% of all cat3  in 120mins

And even then if they arrive after an hour and you have a white pasty ankle and your foot pointing off in a jaunty angle most ambulance paramedics can't reduce as its not in their scope of practice. 

Sorry about your plight. I wish you a speedy recovery.

 I might derail the tryst of your post but isn’t the W3W thing the minutiae ? Isn’t the bigger problem the fact that you’re not speaking to a human because like everything else in this profit driven world staff has been cut down?

 I am speculating here and happy to be told otherwise!

edit: wrong preposition (you love them in that English language of yours, pesky buggers they are!)

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I definitely spoke to a person, however that person was very northern and I am very southern. The person also wasn't paying attention in geography at school and had never heard 'meanders' before.

I can't fault the call handlers, sounds like they worked out what was going on and got in touch with mountain rescue once they had deciphered my posh London accent punctuated by screaming and received a geography lesson.

If it was an automated system I'd probably still be there.

Obviously the best solution would be simply any 112 call telling them the location automatically. 99% of phones are smartphones with GPS and 99% of post‑2018 phones actually do support AML or E112, which gives the emergency services your precise location automatically – no need for them sending you a message with a bloody link to click on (and faffing with manually allowing the browser it opens in access to location services or not clicking on deny on the access popup by mistake, burying the access needed somewhere deep in the menus), no need for some dumb W3W app and the caller trying to pronounce shitty words, etc.

AML or E112 may be already mandated in the EU – it certainly is for the emergency eCall that's mandatory for any new cars made after 2018 and smartphones sold here after 2022. Not all PSAPs might support it yet, but those that do seem to be pretty much loving it.

Pretty ironic that AML was originally developed by British Telecom, yet the UK's emergency services don't seem to use it much...

And even several years before the wider adoption of E112, there were some nationally supported mobile apps in a few Alpine countries that would initiate a 112 call while also sending the services a SMS with your location encoded in it, which the dispatcher would simply see on a map. Even the MR were on it, as you could also call the MR number and they would still get your location.

To the OP, get well soon.

I know it's easy to oversimplify stuff that you don't understand, but is there a reason that all of this has to be the case anyway? I mean, it's obviously good for those of us who go into the hills to know the routine, but pragmatically there are always going to be people who don't and it doesn't seem like it'd be impossible to prepare the people in the ambulance control centre to a) ask people whether they're in a place that needs mountain rescue if it sounds like they could be and b) put them through to mountain rescue if they do

I misunderstood you. I wrongly assumed you had to deal with automation at the start. Apologies. Ignore my previous post then.

There's been several references to 6 figure grid references. These specify a 100m square which will cover a lot of ground best accessed by MR by rather different routes if in craggy terrain. What3Words specifies a 3m square (or is it 10 feet - I presumed it was American?). Obviously much more accurate. But as people have said OSLocate gives a 10 figure reference which specifies a 1m square, and with fewer drawbacks than What3Words. But I agree, you can't easily/accurately find any of the above without a GPS enabled phone which the emergency services should be able to locate  without any additional info. If they can't currently do that then IMO it's time they got it sorted. 

Martin

I think this is actually the core of the issue - not which app or system is being used to give a location (as much as I dislike W3W).  The 999 / 101 operator should have the correct training and protocals to follow to direct any emergency call through to the most appropriate service, whether MR via Police, Ambulance, Fire and Rescue, Coastguard etc.  It shouldn't rely on people in the middle of a potentially very stressful situation knowing what the best option for them is and the right form of words to navigate the operators flow chart. 

It's not always obvious what the best responding service will be - people have highlighted crags that are near roadside earlier in the thread but you also have woodland / forestry where SORT might be the quickest / best respondents, or seacliffs where it may be the coastguard, rural areas where air ambulance can land easily etc

Personal experience of it was when a buddy in the climbing club fell and sustained a serious base of skull fracture at local seacliffs.  The 999 operator was adamant that as it was an injury sustained from a fall from height it needed to be directed to the ambulance service, even though we explained that where we were, distance from nearest vehicle access etc.  Then we had the same problem with them claiming not to be able to use a grid reference and needing our postcode of the address of the nearest house to the incident etc.  To be fair to the ambulance crew, they walked c.20mins with us helping carry their kit (including crossing a rail line) and scrambled down to the casualty.  They also called for heli evac (RAF as this was pre-bristows) as soon as they saw the situation.  Shortly after that the coastguard showed up (another party on an adjacent crag had called it in and got to the coastguard via a different operator) and a farcical argument started over who had primacy and would decide on how the cas was evac'ed.  CG wanted to winch and carry back to the road, Ambulance tech was adamant that serious head injury and elapsed time meant helicopter to nearest hospital.  Appearance of the Seaking settled that one though.

Ultimately very lucky that the ambulance techs were happy to go well beyond remit!  If they hadn't (and we'd been the only party nearby) then it would have extended the wait considerably which may have ended very differently for the injured person.

A combined effort by all outdoor activities groups; anyone who spends time away from home?

- why emergency service operators cannot accept multiple location formats?

- why 999 calls do not exploit AML (or similar) for every call, or use something like SARLOC if AML is not available?

- why special access support requirements (i.e. non-urban or roadside) are not routinely considered, and available to all emergency services (i.e. why is MRT accessible only through the police)?

Don't be afraid to hang up and try a different operator. This has been recommend to me by a paramedic trainer. 

What is needed is joint emergency services control centres like we have in Guernsey and, I think, the Isle of Man. In the Guernsey one, one operator answers the call and goes through their script. Another listens in and dispatches the relevant emergency service(s) whilst the first is still on the phone to the casualty. The vehicle will often have left their base before an accurate address has been obtained from the caller. They access all the common emergency services (police, fire, ambulance) and also act directly as coastguard and thus call out lifeboat and cliff rescue themselves. It seems to work very well.

In Scotland, I don't know about England and Wales, the police are responsible for mountain rescue. All MR teams operate under the auspices of the police and are largely covered by police insurance.