Civic Proximity Response and the Political Economy of Safety: A Unified Thesis on Community-First Emergency Infrastructure

Alex Applebee and A. D. Masters

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Author's Note

This paper exists because of a fall.

An elderly woman fell in her home. Her granddaughter lived sixty seconds away. The ambulance took fourteen minutes. Fourteen minutes is not a staffing problem. It is not a funding problem. It is an architectural problem. The system that determines whether your grandmother lives or dies was not designed to save your grandmother. It was designed to manage a fleet.

That granddaughter could have been there in sixty seconds. She was not alerted. She did not know. By the time she found out, the window had closed.

This paper is Goal 13 ($29 emergency ring) ($29 emergency ring) of the OMXUS project: A $29 ring. Press it, your people come in 60 seconds.

The idea is not original. Hatzolah has been doing it in Jewish communities since 1969 --- volunteer medics who live in the neighbourhood, carry equipment in their cars, and arrive in under three minutes while the ambulance is still being dispatched. Volunteer surf lifesaving in Australia has been doing it on beaches since 1907 --- ordinary people who train, who watch, who run toward danger because someone they can see is drowning. The model works. It has always worked. What has never existed is the technology to extend it to every street, every home, every person who falls and has no one watching.

That is what we are building. A ring that costs twenty-nine dollars. You press it. Your people --- not a call centre, not a dispatch algorithm, not a stranger in a uniform who has never been to your street --- your people come. In sixty seconds. Because they are already there. Because they live next door. Because the system told them someone needs help, told them by name, told them how far away they are, and gave them a reason to move.Read full text →