Android Emergency Location Service

This documentation is for an audience of partners in the emergency services field who are interested in using Android's Emergency Location Service (ELS) to be able to have accurate location fixes and additional emergency information for Android phones during emergency situations. Partners may include relevant government entities, mobile network operators (MNOs), carriers, and public safety infrastructure vendors.

This documentation will cover both the process and technical details of partnering with Google and is designed to cater to more technical viewpoints. For an overview of ELS, see the Android ELS website.

ELS is Android's supplemental emergency location service. Originally, emergency location was mostly derived from cell or GPS, and then sent to emergency services. ELS uses the Android Fused Location Provider (FLP), and computes on-device location when an emergency call or text is made. FLP uses a variety of signals such as GPS, cell, Wi-Fi, and other sensors for a much faster and more accurate location.

If enabled and users opted in (where applicable), ELS can also provide additional emergency information, such as device language, emergency type, medical information, emergency contacts and more.

ELS location may be used by ELS partners as supplemental location information. It does not replace the existing emergency location pipelines, but can enhance these sources of location. ELS works on Android devices with current Google Play services support.