An Architecture for the Provision of Context-Aware Emergency Services in the IP Multimedia Subsystem

Emergency services represent one of the fundamental services offered by the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS). Currently, these services rely on a limited range of contextual information (mainly location). A richer set of contextual information could be exploited to provide enhanced emergency services and lead to more efficient emergency operations. In this paper, we propose an extension of the 3GPP IMS emergency service architecture for the provision of enhanced, context-aware emergency services. The 3GPP presence framework is leveraged and extended to realize the information management aspects of the architecture. Furthermore, a proof-of-concept prototype, showcasing an enhanced emergency service scenario, is presented.