System Measures Stress In Emergency Callers' Voice

cylonlover writes "Chances are that if you're calling 9-1-1 (or 9-9-9, or whatever it is where you are), you're not likely to tell the operator that your case isn't all that urgent, and that it can wait. The problem is, sometimes emergency dispatch centers are so overloaded with callers – all of them stating that they need assistance right now – that some sort of system is required in order to determine who should get help first. Dutch researchers claim to have developed just such a system, which analyzes callers' voices to determine how stressed-out they are."

Comments

Re:Nice, but...

[gstoddart]

Then there is the part where this is only going to factor in when the call centers are overloaded, a situation where something that only works a lot of time can still do lots of good.

Well, Slashdot being comprised of a large number of cynical, jaded people who have worked in engineering related jobs ... we look for the ways this will go horribly wrong first, and then decide if those outweigh the planned benefits. If your false-positive/false-negative rate is too high, your system becomes junk.

This reminds me a lot of polygraphs ... voice-stress analysis might be a lot smarter than we expect it to be ... but, there's a reason why polygraphs aren't admissible in many places in court. It's vague and subjective in a lot of cases. As a result, associated technology isn't always readily trusted by some of us.