The call comes in. The voice is panicked, muffled by noise and fear. “I’m stuck… the stairwell… water everywhere!” 

The 911 telecommunicator is listening intently, coordinating a complex rescue and giving life-saving instructions. But they are often asked to coordinate a rescue without seeing the situation, operating with limited or fragmented information. This is an emergency response challenge that can cost lives and leave communities at risk.

At RapidSOS, we are partnering with public safety to eliminate that information deficit. Today, we are announcing the next major milestone in our long-standing partnership with Google: enabling Emergency Live Video on Android in the U.S.

Now, during an emergency call or text on Android, if the responder determines that seeing the scene would be helpful and it’s safe to do so, they can send a request to your device. You’ll see a prompt on your screen, and you can choose to start securely sharing your camera’s live video with one tap. The feature is encrypted by default, and you are always in control of whether your video is shared, and can stop sharing instantly at any time.

For over a decade, Public Safety has shaped and guided RapidSOS’ technology and product roadmap. Through that journey, 911 has taught RapidSOS that video is transformative only if implemented correctly: it must be initiated by a trained 911 Telecommunicator, contextualized by other data feeds, triggered by a single caller action, and interoperable for field responders. 

• Faster, Smarter Decisions: Context-rich video allows 911 Telecommunicators to instantly assess severity and guide resources more accurately and effectively than ever before. Telecommunications can now obtain eyes-on-scene information from the most immediate source available: the person experiencing the emergency.

• Live Video from the Scene: Complement structured EMD protocols by giving 911 Professionals clearer situational cues to confirm safety, understand what’s unfolding, and deliver the right pre-arrival instructions with greater accuracy and confidence — even in fast-changing or hard-to-describe emergencies.

• Enhanced Officer and Responder Safety: Providing ground-level situational awareness before arrival means first responders and security teams are never walking into the unknown, reducing risk in dynamic environments.

• Resilience & Interoperable Connectivity in Crisis: Live video provides a resilient, redundant pathway for information sharing during large-scale disasters or when voice connections are unstable. This is especially critical during times when phone networks are strained and call volumes spike.

Now, live video from Android devices will help provide a more data-rich view of an emergency; first responders get one complete view of an emergency in seconds before they arrive on scene. This is possible because RapidSOS HARMONY AI instantly combines live video with other data sources in the RapidSOS network all in a single view for 911.

This is the first innovation released following RapidSOS’ $100 million investment last month. With HARMONY AI, the first purpose-built AI by public safety, RapidSOS is helping to transform emergency response by automatically detecting emergencies, unifying real-time data and video streams, and coordinating a faster, more effective response. This intelligence is derived from the world’s largest safety network, which includes data from 600 million connected devices, 200+ global enterprises, and 22,000+ public safety agencies.

The result is mission-critical intelligence that creates one unified operational picture for first responders. Information previously trapped in silos is now instantly delivered. Responders stop running in blind; they run in informed.