Ehud Barak invests $1 million in an emergency reporting app developer

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Israeli start-up ‘Reporty Homeland Security’ has raised $1 million from former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak. The company’s purpose is to improve and streamline communication between citizens and government agencies, while, they say, taking precautions to protect users’ privacy.

‘Reporty Homeland Security’ is currently developing a global platform for real-time reporting, especially useful during emergencies. In the Reporty press release statement Ehud Barak said the company “provides an answer to the essential need of every citizen – a sense of security, based on immediate and easy access to emergency services, including municipalities, hospitals, airports, Police, Fire and Rescue, etc.”

Barak’s investment will accelerate product development, allow the company to hire more people, and distribute its system to emergency services and government organizations.

Jewish Business News describes a situation where emergency and government agencies receive hundreds of millions of calls every year. The average time of such a call is 2 – 3.5 minutes, during which time the center professionals must try to quickly assess the situation, identify the caller’s location as well as evaluate the credibility of the report and of the individual making the call – all this in order to make a quick decision about the best and most effective use of the resources on hand.

Experts note that a vast amount of effort is invested in this process of assessment, clarification, identification and evaluation, especially since 20 to 30 percent of the calls to emergency help centers are false alarms. For example, 23% out of the nine million calls made annually to Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, are nuisance calls.

Quick identification of the caller’s location is also essential. In the United States, about 10,000 people a year die due to failure on the part of emergency and rescue forces to identify their correct location in time. Reporty’s goal is to change this, making the reporting of an emergency, as well as the reception of the report at the emergency help center, more efficient.

Reporty offers an application that works through a broadcast video, in real time, so that with the click of a button two-way video and audio is transmitted to the appropriate emergency center, including accurate data about the location and the report’s degree of credibility.

According to HomeLand Security News Wire the application also allows for communication with pre-designated “guardians,” that is, people designated by the user as individuals capable of helping them in emergencies.

Reporty’s solution combines a smartphone app and a command and control system installed at emergency centers. The company notes that its system may also be installed at sites such as airports and company premises.