In freeze, on wilderness rescues, EMS finds people in need by using What3Words

If you twist your ankle in Zilker Park during the Austin City Limits Music Festival or the upcoming Austin Kite Festival and need to tell EMS exactly where you are by the volleyball courts, you can just say, "I'm at travels.reach.gasp."

If you are in the Austin Convention Center during South by Southwest near the the northwest entrance, you can say "capers.scooped.advising."

Those three words are your exact location narrowed down to a 10-foot-by-10-foot square, devised by the British company What3Words.

How does What3Words work?

What3Words has taken the entire world and mapped it into 57 trillion 10-foot-by-10-foot squares. Each square is assigned three words that no other square has been assigned in that order.

Using the app, you can locate yourself in the world in three words. The algorithm avoids homophones and uses plurals of words but spreads them out to different areas of the world. It's in 50 languages as well.

In the app, if you are looking for someone, you put in the three words and it will offer a compass to direct you to that location.

How is What3Words used?

People use What3Words to remember their favorite hiking spots or to connect with friends at big events. Car insurance companies and car manufacturers use it to locate people as part of their emergency roadside assistance services. Delivery services use it to find the person who ordered that kung pao chicken.

How much does What3Words cost?

It's a free app for individuals. Businesses pay for the app.

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How does EMS use What3Words?

For Austin-Travis County EMS, especially in wilderness rescues, lake rescues or places where there are not definitive landmarks, they can have the emergency system send the 911 caller a link to My3Words to help locate the person.

Austin-Travis County EMS has been using What3Words since 2017 to help locate people but has really ramped it up in the past two years as the ease of finding people in difficult areas has become clear.

Wilderness rescue has been especially important, said Capt. Darren Noak of Austin-Travis County EMS. Now, he said, on most rescue calls you'll hear one of the responders ask, "Do we have What3Words on this?"

"Responders are asking for this as they are arriving," Noak said. "It's a lot simpler, easier to use."

Previously, they've used latitude and longitude coordinates, but it's easy to transpose that series of long numbers.

For 911 callers who are in a panic, "if you can say pyramid.branch.banana, we can find you," Noak said.

What about in widespread events?

In the most recent freeze last month, community health paramedics visited people who are unhoused to try to get them into cold-weather shelters. They created an Excel spreadsheet that had the number of people living there and the three words for that location. Then paramedics could go back to that exact location throughout the freeze and offer services again as the temperature dipped below freezing.

While using What3Words is important for big events, it's that day-to-day wilderness rescue or rescues in other large areas without specific visual cues like a big park that have made it an important part of the EMS routine.

"Responding to 911 calls on greenbelt areas, you can't say, 'Go down the trail and when you get to a creek hang a left.' ... We are able to start addressing those (places) that are unaddressible," Noak said.

Austin and Travis County have also thought about hanging signs in greenbelt areas with a specific location's What3Words to act as guideposts for people to give to first-responders without someone having to send those in need a link to the app.

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This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: What3Words helps Austin-Travis County EMS find people