Mountain rescue. Alpify company, the headquarters in Andorra (Pyrenees) and Barcelona (Spain, Catalonia), finished the first stage of financing via Caixa Capital RISC in the amount of 400 000 euro aimed at its international expansion.
Alpify has developed free mobile application for the geolocation of users in case of emergency. The company has also developed the operation panel for 112/911 emergency services that may precisely determine the location of the person that applied for help. By means of the application a user may send SOS-message with the precise coordinates of his location via GPS only by pressing the emergency button on his phone. Besides, in case the information from a mobile device failed to be delivered, the operation panel allows the emergency services to determine the coordinates only by GPS data.
Currently the Alpify application is used by 70 000 of subscribers. The project was launched in Andorra and partially in Spain where 112 service uses it in 5 regions: Aragon, Cantabria, the Basque Country and Extremadura. In accordance to the latest agreements, the system starts to be implemented in Venezuela (in Caracas with 3.5 mln of population). The system is most actively used at such ski resorts as Grandvalira and Vallnord, Saint-Lary, Font-Romeu, Courchevel (France) and Argentinean Las Llenas.
Thanks to this application, in summer several persons were rescued from the Pyrenees between Spain and France maximum promptly.
The idea of Alpify emerged in 2012 after a traveler disappeared and later died in the Pyrenees. The case caused big interest because the lost man was communicating with emergency services for quite a long time but failed to explain his location till the phone battery died. The customarily method of mobile device positioning by means of aerial triangulation calculations doesn’t work precisely especially in case the device is located in the mountains with insufficient coverage of receiving towers.
See also Andorra business guide
See also Andorra company formation
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