@jonah, thanks for posting. I'm the guy that wrote those PDFs. The #1 thing that suprised me in doing the research is that the standard 911 system as defined by the FCC does not get the caller's coordinates from their cell phone like Uber does.
Now with that said, there are a lot of 911 call centers that use RapidSOS or other add on technology that do get the caller's coordinates directly from the caller's phone.
Of course a person calling 911 has no way to know beforehand whether the 911 call center handling their call will be able to get their coordinates via technology. That is the reason I urge everyone to have some way to use their phone to get their coordinates and the equally important accuracy value. Use a compass app, use FindMeSAR (I am developer) or use something else. I don't care. Instead, the important point is that you use 'something instead of nothing'.
I am the developer of FindMeSAR (https://findmesar.com) which is mentioned here in the comments. The first time you open this web page your device must be online. The code is saved in a special part of your browser's memory. This web page (aka web app) will then work offline. This is done with service worker coding plus appcache coding as a fall back.
If you are a bit skeptical that a web page can work offline, just go ahead and try it.
There is an icon you can save on your screen and a 'Tips' button with more information.
Finally, it turns out that if you ever need to call for help with your cell phone there are some things you should know in order to have the best chance of reaching 911 or anyone else. After reading through a whole pile of documents on the FCC website I put my findings into 4 PDF reports. The end of each report has links to the other reports.
The US Forest Service has GPS data for many trails. In 2013 I happened upon a USFS GIS server hosting that data. I began displaying that trail data with my Gmap4 browser app and asking questions so I understood the data better.
Then the trail data disappeared from the GIS server.
Apparently USFS management was clueless that anyone who (1) knew the address ("endpoint") for the GIS server and (2) had GIS client software, could display (gasp!) the trail data.
I have seen the trail data. Is it perfect? No, of course not - and it never will be. Is it more right than wrong? Absolutely!
Certainly the USFS could provide that data to the USGS so many more trails could be included on the new digital topos but so far the USFS has refused to do so.
Naturally I filed a FOIA for this trail data and naturally it was denied. My FOIA appeal is currently pending before the USFS Chief.
Here's a bit of good news. Before the trail data disappeared from the GIS server I downloaded the data for trails in the national forests in WA, OR and CA. I then processed that data with some custom code to make it more useful and produced a series of trail maps with mileages. If you are curious you can visit the Gmap4 examples page and look down just a bit for the link to the national forest maps.
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4_examples.html
Thanks to timboslice for mentioning Gmap4. I am the developer of that browser app.
By my count there are 5 browser apps that I refer to as enhanced Google map viewers. Each of us devs have produced our own version of Google maps on steroids so you can surf maps (including seamless topos), display your data, or display other data that you find online.
In order more-or-less by launch date, these 5 apps are:
ACME Mapper
GPS Visualizer
Gmap4 (Joseph Elfelt - that’s me)
Hill Map
CalTopo (Matt Jacobs)
A few years ago the USGS made very hi-res scans of all (yup “all”) their paper topos. Matt shipped a box of harddrives to USGS and got back copies of those scans for the most recently published paper topo for all of the USA. Of course for some locations the “most recently published paper topo” is rather old. Matt whipped up some GDAL magic to de-collar those scans and chop them into tiles. He is hosting the tiles on Amazon’s cloud and invited me to display them with Gmap4 (where I call Matt’s tiles “t4 Topo High).
Finally here is a project I just started a few days ago to use Gmap4 to display data that (1) is hosted on state and federal GIS servers and (2) shows public land boundaries and recreation features. Here is the top page for this project. OK, time to ’fess up. I’m a software dev, not a web designer.
http://www.propertylinemaps.com/p/public_land_map.html
(The html pages for these public land maps contain a plug for my startup which georeferences land surveys and property legal descriptions.)
One of the next features I am going to add to Gmap4 is the ability to click a GIS feature and see a popup with the attributes for the thing you clicked.
Now with that said, there are a lot of 911 call centers that use RapidSOS or other add on technology that do get the caller's coordinates directly from the caller's phone.
Of course a person calling 911 has no way to know beforehand whether the 911 call center handling their call will be able to get their coordinates via technology. That is the reason I urge everyone to have some way to use their phone to get their coordinates and the equally important accuracy value. Use a compass app, use FindMeSAR (I am developer) or use something else. I don't care. Instead, the important point is that you use 'something instead of nothing'.