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GeoSafe
Instant geolocated communications & population movement analysis
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Intersec is a PSCE member. 
PSCE, the Public Safety Communications Europe Forum was established as a result of a European Commission funded project in 2008. PSCE is a permanent autonomous organisation, working to foster excellence in the development and use of public safety communication and information management systems by consensus building.
Data for public safety: combine Cell Broadcast and Location-Based SMS
Our GeoSafe Solution enables you to easily spot suspicious activity, or to warn all people who are in, or about to enter, a certain area. Use our solution to make quick decisions based on hard facts.
Alerting management process
In a context of increasing demand for public security and protection against natural and man-made disasters, public authorities and services are under a strong pressure to prevent, respond and address efficiently crisis.
The omnipresence of mobile phones (71% penetration rate in 2018 according to GSMA) allows municipalities, counties, regional and national public authorities to leverage on mobile alerting for Public Warning at regional scale as much as at national scale. Emergency communication requires many specific operational aspects such as:
- The ability to reach people with any kind of phone (from 2G to 5G)
- The fast and massive dissemination of messages as well as the very accurate targeting of specific ones
- The ability to instantly alert international travelers and to send them messages in their own language
- A monitoring of how populations respond to emergency alerts and a repeated alert feature
In Europe, it has even become an obligation of all Member States to equip themselves with a mobile-based alert systems, known as “Reverse 112” project.
Intersec GeoSafe offers a multi-modal Public Warning System enabling governments to deal with mass alerting via Location-based SMS as well as Cell Broadcast. By combining these mobile alerting technologies, GeoSafe provides local authorities and public safety agencies with an effective emergency communication flow to increase population reach in case of alert or disaster.
Why Cell Broadcast?
Cell Broadcast is an interesting technology when dealing with Emergency Warning as Cell Broadcast messages are directly displayed on mobile-phone screens, whatever the compatible device or the origin-country. The text message is broadcasted from the Cell Broadcast Center (CBC) to all mobile devices in a defined area with a specific ringtone and display, for the message to instantly be recognized as an alert. Moreover, before being able to use his phone, the user needs to acknowledge the alert, giving the government organizations a feedback that the message was well conveyed.
Cell Broadcast Service is a powerful technology: one may reach millions of devices in a few seconds even if the operators’ networks are congested and in full GDPR compliance as the phone number of the subscriber is not needed to broadcast the message.
The limitations of Cell Broadcast rely in:
- the maximum length of the text -1395 characters per message.
- the compatibility to CB of the device: in order to receive the alert, the users need to have a compatible device and the CB capability (in Europe: EU-Alert) enabled on their phone.
Why Location-based SMS?
Combining SMS and cell-based location, LB SMS (Location-Based SMS) offers the accuracy of the cell (even Subcell when cells are too large for a fine targeting of the population) and the ubiquity of the SMS -already supported by 100% of mobile antennas and phones all over the world. The SMS message is addressed to mobile subscribers entering, leaving or inside a defined zone allowing:
- a count of the recipients in a specific zone
- individual delivery reports (real time monitoring)
- language-specific content to adapt the message to the roamer (based on recipients’ country code). 
LB SMS enables population protection by preventing people from entering a dangerous zone.
As it retrieves mobile-subscribers’ numbers, LB SMS also allows post-event communication: sending follow-up alerts to recipients who received the initial alert to ensure safer evacuations.
LB SMS offer other advantages:
- integration with MNOs legacy systems is easy ensuring relatively low investments.
- It’s an easy 2-ways communication tool which can be helpful in case of injuries.
- Evolution from legacy networks towards 4G and 5G has increased the capacity of networks, allowing massive SMS sending without network congestion.
- Finally, as stated by EENA “LB-SMS are compliant with privacy laws (even though some adaptations in national law might be required). The central components in typical LB-SMS are installed inside the mobile operators’ network. This guarantees the privacy of recipients. Thus, privacy sensitive information like mobile numbers and person identification data is never shared outside the operators’ networks.”
Resources
Discover our white paper: Citizens’ security: mobile location data can do much more.
Wireless network location data is an under‐used asset for national security. Understand the possibilities and limitations offered by 3GPP standards on geolocation... Learn More
Discover our white paper: Using mobile technologies in Public Alerting. 
Understand the state of the art regarding the use of mobile technologies in Public Warning Systems (PWS).
Learn more