A Mountain Rescue team in the Lake District has repeated calls for walkers not to be dependent on the smartphone app What3Words if needing to call for assistance.
Keswick Mountain Rescue Team issued the warning after members of their team were guided to the wrong side of a lake. The information given to a 999 call handler following the collapse of an 83-year-old woman included a location from the popular app. The location was provided using the system which uses a unique set of three words to map a location. The app had placed the casualty some distance away which delayed the rescue team as they responded to the emergency.
What3Words Smartphone App
What3Words is an app that uses a unique combination of three words to pinpoint an exact location. The popular app is used by members of the public, courier services, emergency services and more. Within an urban area with strong GPS and phone signals, the app promises to give an accurate location to the square metre. W3W is a popular method of location pinpointing, in situations where one might not normally be equipped with a map.
W3W should not be relied upon on its own. Always give a verbal description of where the casualty is and better still a grid reference from a map or use the OS Locate app
Keswick Mountain Rescue Team
Mountain Rescue Directed to Wrong Location
The app, working on the phone’s location service placed the injured party to the west of Derwent Water. The casualty was in fact near the northeast shore. The initial responders arrived at the reported incident location to find the area deserted.
As reported by Grough a Land Rover arriving at the location found no sign of the casualty. The team found the true location of the incident after further investigation. Fortunately, this happened to be close to the MRT base, allowing a team to respond quickly after the initial delay.
A spokesperson from Keswick MRT indicated that there had been two similar cases over three days. Both involved a W3W location causing problems finding the actual location. The W3W locations were, the spokesperson said, “close enough to be believable but wrong enough to be useless”
The spokesperson advised against reliance on one app and gave advice that “W3W should not be relied upon on its own. Always give a verbal description of where the casualty is, and better still a grid reference from a map or use the OS Locate app.”
Advice from the Lakeland team applies across all national parks. What3Words is a useful tool for urban environments. It can be effective at finding a location to a precise spot given ideal conditions. The app is reliant on the accuracy of a phone’s GPS system and settings.