These Students Help Emergency Services Know Where to Find You

There’s a lot of data involved.

By Alex DailyAugust 11, 2016 10:03 am,

When you call 911, you’re likely in a stressful situation. You rely on the operator to have accurate location information so that the fire department or ambulance can get to you quickly. But what happens if your county’s data is incorrect? That’s what Jennifer Lindsey and Brian Christman, two Austin Community College students, work on for their internships.

“We are making sure the underlying address data and street data is of sufficient accuracy so it will allow emergency services to quickly and efficiently get to your house or your location,” Christman says.

Christman and Lindsey work on gathering that data and then send it to relevant counties, to give them a better idea of where they stand in terms of emergency service efficiency.

“I really like the emergency response aspect of it,”Lindsey says. “There’s this element of action.”

“Personally, I enjoy the data side of things,” Christman says. “Figuring out how accurate things are and where we need to go to make them even better.”

Listen to their stories in the player above.