In a nod to the rising popularity of smartphones and the mobile devices' growing role as a primary means of communications, enhanced 911 solutions provider RedSky Technologies, Inc announced today that it has launched a dowloadable smartphone application, 'My e911.'

The app is designed to provide personalized E911 protection while also improving security on college and corporate campuses, company officials say.

Nick Maier, senior vice president at RedSky (News - Alert), told TMCnet in an interview that higher education institutions increasingly have become attuned to "best practices in emergency communications."

"April 16 marked the third anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech and in the wake of that tragedy some very detailed recommendations have been published regarding how colleges and universities should handle emergency communications including E911," Maier told TMCnet. "Couple this with the fact that college campuses are full of students who use smartphones as their primary means of communications and it's no surprise that higher ed is so focused on the issue."

Sadly, as the Associated Press reported today, campus violence is on the rise. According to a joint agency study, the incidence of campus violence rose from 40 cases in the 1980s to 79 in the 1990s and 83 since 2000.

So RedSky's announcement - made today at the 2010 Annual Conference of ACUTA, the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education - is timely.

Smartphone users can use My e911 in the event of an emergency. In dialing 9-1-1, this application will ensure call and location information is routed to the proper public safety answering point for fast action by first responders. That's the major advantage of E911 technology, which leverages location-based services to help those emergency professionals find distressed callers. Required by law in more states each year, E911 is especially helpful in physical locations such as schools or enterprise offices where a single street address serves a large, multi-building campus.

When a 9-1-1 call is routed, the My e911 application notifies campus or corporate security with a Google (News - Alert) map to pinpoint the exact location of the caller. This helps to speed on-site emergency response.

An added feature of the My e911 application is the ability to set up personal emergency contacts to receive the same notification in the event of a 9-1-1 call.

"Many colleges and enterprises have students and employees who rely on smartphones for their communications and this creates a real campus safety issue in the event of an emergency," Maier said. "My e911 helps campus security teams manage emergency response to smartphone users who dial 9-1-1 when on campus.'

College or enterprise IT or security organizations can optimize the application by making campus security the default entity to be notified of all 9-1-1 calls. My e911 can then be distributed to smartphone users through college or corporate Web portals. With an easy-to-use Web interface, smartphone users can create their personal emergency contact notification list.

Using a hierarchy of GPS, then WiFi (News - Alert), then cell towers, My e911 captures best available location information when a 9-1-1 call is placed. While the call is underway, the application continues to poll for new location information in order to constantly improve the precision of the location data.

If a smartphone user is on the campus WiFi network when placing an emergency call, My e911 will communicate with RedSky's E911 Manager to poll the WiFi network and determine the precise location coordinates of the caller. The software is designed to continue to track callers who may be moving or running in an emergency.

Designed specifically for integration into existing campus or enterprise application delivery platforms, My e911 is compatible with leading smartphone operating systems, such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and Google Android (News - Alert)

In other recent RedSky news, the company recently teamed with Aruba Networks (News - Alert) to launch a WiFi-based emergency call location solution for campus, branch office and teleworker applications.