Whilst I was at the Outdoor Show in Germany last week I was talking to an event app company (sorry I can't remember their name now) but they build app's for events. They started out by tracking tweets at events and public gatherings to show clusters of people for the police so police can have officers in areas where the greatest number of people are. They are able to see where groups of people are massing and where trouble is most likely to start.
From this work they started to develop app's for individual events which help people that are at that event, such information as water points, toilets, retailers and other information but the apps have another purpose, one used for public safety. If you down load the app the police gold commander can track the location of the app so it can see where everyone with the app is at any moment of time. The gold commander can then control health and safety more efficiently. I was informed that they can only track the app and have no other access to any information on your phone and the police have no access to even the individual phone numbers.
The interesting fact is that if there is an incident then the gold commander can send messages to the people with the app. Useful information of misper reports, evacuation directions and incident reports. The first event app they made was for the Lord Mayors show in London 2011 and it proved to be a huge success. It has been used around the world since and is helping to make events safer.
In future if I am at an event I will see if it has an app and will download it. It could be very useful if a major incident happens.
