Called i-1-1, an app from a startup in Clermont County hopes to improve on 911 services

When you call 911, does the operator know where you are 100 percent of the time? If you're calling on a landline, maybe. But not if you're calling from a cell phone. The Federal Communications Commission estimates that more than 10,000 people die annually because dispatchers can't find them. (For an entertaining take on the problems with 911, see this segment from "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.") That's one of the problems with 911 dispatching that Global Crisis Awareness, run out of Clermont County, hopes to address. The company has created an app, i-1-1, whose main feature is that it enables a caller to contact an emergency dispatcher and request emergency services in less than 10 seconds. How is that better than simply dialing 911? For one thing, said the company's co-founder, Scott Boots, it gives the dispatcher a much more accurate fix on your location by using your phone's own location technology. The location technology that emergency dispatchers have is not as accurate as what your cell phone has, Boots said, which "almost always knows where you are."