Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou on Monday welcomed the signing of a contract by the Civil Defence and the Cyprus telecommunications authority (Cyta) which will allow for the rollout of a more technologically advanced emergency calling system across the island, known as ‘Next generation 112’.

“With the project, our country is taking another substantial step towards more effective emergency management. The Next generation 112 system will operate as the national emergency call receiving centre, serving all of the republic’s response services,” he said.

He added that Monday’s agreement will see the new technology rolled out over a period of 20 months, and that once the technology has been implemented, it will constitute “another substantial step towards more modern, effective and reliable emergency management”.

According to the European emergency number association, the implementation of Next generation 112 entails “integrating… new technologies into emergency services, so that they can receive not just voice, but location information, real-time text, photos, video calls and other data” from members of the public alerting the emergency services.

“This means that emergency services will have to upgrade their technology to embrace internet-based communications in the next years,” it said.

It added that “the Next generation 112 architecture enables the modernisation of emergency communications, allowing for far more data collection, which will result in a more efficient response”.

Additionally, it said, the inclusion of this technology will help “to ensure equivalent access for all … including people with disabilities”.