On 27 and 28 November over 200 delegates from various European traffic, emergency and civil-protection organizations, plus road-safety experts, took part in the International Conference and practical demonstration of the pan-European HeERO2 project for roll out of the in-vehicle emergency call service “eCall”. The event was hosted by the Spanish pilot site coordinator Dirección General de Tráfico (Spanish Traffic Authority) to announce the current situation of the second phase of the Spanish eCall pilot project.

Spain, together with countries like Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Luxembourg and Turkey, is leading the second phase of the project financed by the European Union and coordinated by ERTICO.

eCall is an in-vehicle system that, in case of an incident, automatically calls the European emergency number 112. By giving the exact georeferenced location of the accident, it slashes the response time; it also adds on decisive information for emergency services, saving lives and reducing the consequences of injuries.

GMV is one of the companies participating in the pilot carried out in Spain. This has involved a series of developments to adapt three basic segments to the defined European standards. These three segments are the Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), the mobile telephony network and the eCall in-vehicle system (IVS).

The Spanish pilot used an intermediate PSAP hosted in the Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT) with the remit of forwarding calls to the corresponding regional 112 emergency call center, depending on the geographical location in each case.

GMV has provided part of the system functions deployed in the intermediate public safety answering point (PSAP) plus some onboard equipment of the IVS.

GMV, in particular, has been responsible for developing the “Planner”, which integrates the PSAP system with the rest of the tools and databases used by the DGT for traffic management purposes. The planner is a management system that comprises a lightweight viewer for displaying eCall emergency calls, a call information enhancement process, a database for storing said information and a set of Webservices for communicating this information to DGT’s other systems (such as the LINCE application, which manages different types of incidents on Spanish roads). 

GMV has also provided a set of pilot-vehicle onboard devices (IVS) capable of sending eCalls manually or automatically. These devices, all inhouse GMV developments, are compliant with the various standards required at European level and have been successfully tried out with PSAP solutions of different providers.

These devices were installed in four vehicles donated to the project by GMV’s client ALD Automotive, which has collaborated actively throughout the whole pilot scheme.

GMV has also played an important role in running one of the four demonstrators forming part of the Spanish pilot. This demonstrator is deployed in the Comunidad de Madrid (Madrid Regional Authority), coordinating the various test-vehicle equipping tasks (four vehicles), recording all test-campaign information and analyzing it within a previously defined performance framework.

This project cements GMV’s standing as a key player in telematic vehicle services, both in the onboard segment and in the service-enabling platforms. It also reaffirms its ongoing support for the development of applications designed to improve road safety.