The Internet has changed our society in astonishing ways during the last 20 years. It has enabled companies as well as individuals to communicate information easily to a worldwide audience. It has also influenced the way we interact with each other.

The topic of this book is a result of this change: emergency services is a feature of the telecommunication system and is therefore tightly bound to the evolution of the underlying communication infrastructure.

As communication moves to the Internet Protocol (IP)-based infrastructure, there is the question of how emergency services should be offered in this new communication environment. From a technology point of view, it has the potential to offer more functionality at a lower cost.

This book describes the completed efforts as well as ongoing developments to make IP-based communication systems offer emergency services functionality that is equivalent to those offered by today’s telecommunication infrastructure.