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IM4DEC : Identity Management for the Digital Emergency Call

UN convention Article 9 requires countries to take measures for the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities, including access to communication and information services. Despite this, there are still about 1 million deaf and hard of hearing persons in Europe who currently rely on outdated technology (e.g. fax) and help from others to make an emergency call.
DEC112 is a non-profit association that has designed and developed a standard-conform infrastructure (ETSI TS 103 479) for deaf emergency chats (ETSI TS 103 698). Since 2019, the association is now operating a system in Austria in collaboration with the Ministry of Interior that connects emergency chats to the appropriate emergency communication centre by utilising location information.
However, still a number of challenges exist that are addressed in our project:

  • Presenting a verified identity when delivering an emergency chat: replace current SMS verification with an eIDAS 2.0 compliant identity based on DIDs
  • Deliver relevant (pre-recorded) information in case of an emergency: extend current free-text stored on the smartphone with structured information stored securely online
  • Operators struggle with chat from deaf persons: introduce an AI-based chatbot to train users and share this information with emergency organisations as basis for new training material
  • Such data (identity, emergency information, training chats) are considered special category data under the GDPR and we will perform a formal DPIA (Data Protection Impact Assessment) for the end-to-end dataflow
  • This is not only for the benefit of deaf people but also individuals oppressed by domestic violence can make use of this technology through the use of a silent emergency notification; already in operation since 2022 in Austria we will provide an SDK to include this functionality in an EU Digital Identity Wallet to get such functionality on every phone.
 

EU Authorities addressed these topics in Regulation 2023/444 that require all member states to ensure accessible communication services to emergency services from 2025 onwards: with our project we make sure that such future solutions take special needs of the deaf community and oppressed individuals into consideration.

Website: https://www.ownyourdata.eu/im4dec

  • Motivation for the project: With our solution we want to enhance security and privacy protection when using a decentralised identity. Additionally, interoperability and user control & consent will be improved with the design patterns outlined in our project.
  • Generic use case description: Firstly, we demonstrate the use of government issued IDs to trigger a silent emergency notification and secondly, show how such an identity can be used for a secure data exchange with organisations based on data agreements.
  • Essential functionalities: Our technology will demonstrate the use of government issued identities on blockchain and non-blockchain based decentralised identifiers and additionally, show case how to seamlessly switch between DID methods.
  • How these functionalities can be integrated within the software ecosystem: We provide a registration element for onboarding based on a government ID and an SDK for EU Identity Wallets to trigger a silent emergency notification. Furthermore, we perform and document DPIAs for using DIDs in a safety critical environment and for sharing sensitive personal data.
  • Gap being addressed: Demonstrate switching between DID methods (DID Rotation), foster work on the DID resolution specification work, demonstrate the use of DIDs in a production use case in the emergency communication domain. Document a Data Privacy Impact Assessment for the usage of DIDs.
  • Expected benefits achieved with the novel technology building blocks: Projects will benefit from a registration element for onboarding based on a government issued ID and can use the Data Privacy Impact Assessments (DPIAs) as blue print for their own work. For wallet developers we provide a concrete implementation to offer a government service (emergency notification).
  • Potential demonstration scenario: The implementation will be deployed in the production environment of the Austrian ESInet (Emergency Service IP network) to enable citizens performing text-based emergency chats. Based on upcoming EU legislation this is an infrastructure to become mandatory in all EU countries.

Team

Christoph Fabianek

Dr Fabianek is the founder of OwnYourData.eu and senior lead scientist at Frequentis A

Fajar Juang Ekaputra

Dr Ekaputra is the Assistant Professor at WU Wien with focus on Semantic Web, Knowledge Engineering, and Data Integration

Jan Lindquist

Jan Lindquist is the privacy expert and data governance specialist, member of the Swedish Institute for Standards, ISO Swedish expert on information security

Gabriel Unterholzer

Gabriel Unterholzer is the president and developer of DEC112, self-employed software developer, studies computer science at University Bielefeld

Wolfgang Kampichler

Wolfgang Kampichler is the co-chair of the EENA Tech & Ops Committee of the European Emergency Number Association, ETSI Rapporteur, principal scientist at Frequentis AG

Mario Murrent

Mario Murrent studied at FH Wr. Neustadt and is SW developer and consultant. He is founder of MeeCode by Mario Murrent and a passionated App Developer and contracting party for DEC112

Entities

Verein zur Förderung der selbstständigen Nutzung von Daten (OwnYourData)

OwnYourData is a non-profit association and helps you to achieve unrestricted access to your data for your benefit.

Website: www.OwnYourData.eu

Verein zur Entwicklung von standardisierten und barrierefreien Notrufen (DEC112)

Rethinking emergency communication.

Website: www.dec112.eu