REX FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSE
You have minutes.
The search takes five seconds.
REX for Emergency Response is one system for handling a life-critical location request from Search and Rescue. Your NOC searches one system, logs the request, and sends the answer over API into the map of a rescue crew who are already in the air, so they can narrow the terrain instead of flying over it.
5 seconds
A typical search for one person, under normal conditions
2 integrations
Your MLC and your cell inventory. CRM if you have it.
On premise
The data never leaves your environment.
1 system
Request, search, delivery and audit log in one place
RIGHT NOW, A POSITION IS AGGREGATED BY HAND
Why locating a missing person takes hours today
The request comes at 03:00, with a crew already in the air, and in most networks the answer is still built by hand; searches across several systems, run by whoever can be reached, read out over the phone.
WHAT HAPPENS TODAY
WHAT IT COSTS
NO SINGLE SYSTEM - a position aggregated from several network systems by hand.
Hours, where seconds decide.
PERSON DEPENDENCY - a few named individuals can produce the answer.
If they are unreachable, the capability is not there.
MANUAL HANDOVER - the position passed by phone, mail or voice.
Transcription errors, in the one step that has to be exact.
STAFFING - effective coverage means specialists available 24/7.
FTE cost for a capability used sporadically.
NO AUDIT TRAIL - little logging of what was requested, by whom, on what grounds.
The legal review has nothing to review.
BEING THE MISSING LINK - the rescue service cannot use its capability because of you.
Reputational and political exposure.
Hours by hand. About five seconds in one system. Every hour of that difference is a crew flying over ground they cannot narrow.
The systems you have were not built for this. Billing, the Mobile Location Centre, the cell database and the network inventory each hold a piece of the answer. None of them was designed to aggregate it in five seconds at three in the morning, for a caller who is not your customer. That is not a failure of your stack: it is a job it was never given.
ONE END-TO-END CHAIN — FROM EMERGENCY CALL TO THE CREW ON SITE
How a modern Search and Rescue location request works
01.
The aircraft launches
Search and Rescue takes the call, gets an indication of direction, and is in the air on it. It does not wait for the network detailed answer.
02.
One search, in one system
Your NOC searches only in REX and gets MLC positioning for the handset, together with last known cell and its direction. The authority, the stated grounds and the case reference are logged before the search runs. Search result in about five seconds.
03.
It reaches the crew mid-flight
Sent to the helicopter over an API built for rescue services, into the crew's own map system, in real time. Where API is not in place, REX exports the position as file or it is shared over radio to the crew.
04.
The search narrows
The crew triangulates around the area they have been given. The mobile base station (MPDLS) and IMSI catcher on board connects with the handset and works with the aircraft's maps, and its other equipment to close the last distance.
05.
The person is reached
The rescue team goes in by air, boat or by ground.
*02-04
Dependency line
By the time your search starts, the crew is already airborne. Nothing they carry can narrow the terrain until your answer reaches them. That is what the five seconds are for.
How large an area the rescue team has to search
Each panel is a magnification of the one before it.
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CELL AND CELL DIRECTION ALONE
At least 420 km²
That is what cell plus cell direction actually gives: a wedge from the mast. A 120° sector, a third of the cell's coverage, out to about 20 km radius comes to about 420 km²
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WITH MLC POSITIONING
Under 78x78m
Depending on underlying MLC technology in use, either two polygons cross and REX identifies a narrowed search area, or REX returns the latitude/longitude position which is even further narrow. All in about five seconds.
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ONCE THE AIRCRAFT IS WORKING THE AREA
10-15m
The crew closes the last distance from the air using the MPDLS, aircraft equipment and telecom network data.
What REX for Emergency Response does
One search, one system, one answer
Your NOC searches REX, not four network systems in turn. The case record, the log and the exchange with the authority sit in the same place. The answer looks the same every time, whoever is on shift.
An API built for rescue services
The answer goes straight into the crew's own map, in real time, over an API made for this. No phone call, no transcription, no waiting for someone to write a position down correctly. Where there is no API yet, a file export and radio keeps the chain intact until there is.
TWO INTEGRATIONS TO START
What data sources REX for Emergency Response needs
This runs on data sources you already have and is deployed in your own infrastructure.
REX sits on top of them and takes what your MLC and cell inventory already produce, rather than asking your network to produce something new, gives just a few weeks from kickoff to full delivery.
MLC
Your Mobile Location Centre, for MLC positioning. That is what REX runs on. REX is the operational layer around your MLC, not a replacement for it.
Cell inventory
Your cell and cell direction data. It is what lets REX return not just the last known cell but the direction from it – the difference between sending a crew to a circle and sending them to a sector.
CRM
If subscriber data is available, REX correlates it. If it is not, the workflow runs without it.
Whatever your MLC returns, REX works with it. MLC positioning means real-time Timing Advance in some networks and detailed lat/long in others. REX takes either and returns a detailed position in about five seconds. You do not need to find out which your network produces before you talk to us.
EXTERNAL ACCESS, ON YOUR TERMS
How rescue teams get secure, temporary access
Rescue personnel do not get an account. They get a token, issued for one operation.
Scoped to the case — they see what the operation requires, nothing else.
Time-limited — access expires with the operation, not with someone remembering.
Revocable — at any moment from your side, immediately.
Fully logged — every action by every external user, on the same record.
Field-ready — it keeps working while the crew is on the ground.
External access is scoped, temporary, revoked and logged.
THE AUTHORITY MAKES THE ASSESSMENT
The legal basis for disclosing location data in an emergency
Emergency and vital-interest provisions permit disclosure that would otherwise not be permitted. The police and rescue services make that assessment and may have it reviewed afterwards and the operator acts on the request it receives. REX keeps the record that the review needs.
REX for Emergency Response holds no history — it answers from activation forward. The Historical Timing Advance add-on works on a bounded window set with your legal team e.g., 24-48 hours.
ON EVERY REQUEST, REX LOGS
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The requesting authority and case reference
-
The stated legal grounds
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Who ran the search, and when
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What was searched and what was returned
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What was disclosed, to whom, in what format
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Every action taken under third-party access
REX answers where the handset is now. The case it cannot answer alone is the one that starts too late: the battery died before anyone raised the alarm. There is no live handset for the crew to connect to, so the aircraft has nothing to narrow by. That case needs history.
MLC positioning
From day one. Answers where the handset is now.
Historical Timing Advance
The add-on. Answers where the handset was before it went silent.
WHEN THE PHONE WAS ALREADY OFF
Historical Timing Advance — finding a handset that has gone silent
The two are complementary: historical TA is not searchable for roughly its first 30 minutes, which is exactly the window MLC positioning covers. Start with what your network already produces. Add history when the case that begins with a dead battery becomes the one you cannot afford to lose.
FOR RESCUE COORDINATORS AND AUTHORITIES
Why MPDLS depends on the mobile network
An MPDLS is a mobile base station carried on the rescue helicopter or drone. The crew launches on a first indication of direction and is over the terrain within minutes. That part waits for nobody.
Narrowing the search is what waits. Cell and cell direction alone leave at least hundreds of square kilometers. MLC positioning from the operator brings that to well under 78 × 78 m, delivered over an API built for rescue services, and only then can the crew work the area down to 10–15 m.
Without the network side, the aircraft is up there with nothing to narrow by. That is how a country can buy MPDLS and still not have the capability.
From Emergency Response to the full REX platform
In Norway the complete chain runs nationally, and the time from alert to a missing person being rescued fell from 15 hours to 2.
That rests on the whole chain running; MPDLS on the aircraft and the full REX platform behind it, every data source connected, historical Timing Advance included. Emergency Response is the first step onto that same platform.
Questions your team will ask
REX consolidates data from the telecom operator’s Mobile Location Center (MLC) and cell inventory into a single automated workflow. Instead of NOC personnel manually querying multiple systems during an emergency, REX processes the request and delivers precise location data via API in under 5 seconds.
Your MLC gives you positioning. REX is the operational layer around it, not a replacement for it.
What the MLC does not give you is everything that turns a location into a rescue: request handling, a case record, a log, the same delivery format every time, secure access for the rescue crew, and the API into the helicopter's map.
And it is REX that turns that positioning into a searchable area for a crew already in the air — well under 78 × 78 m in about five seconds, against at several hundreds of square kilometers from cell and cell direction alone.
A search for one person, under normal conditions, typically returns in about five seconds. That is the search itself — the request is already logged, and the position goes on to the rescue crew's map over the API from there. Historical searches and unusual network conditions take longer.
Cell and cell direction alone leave a rescue team with at least 400 km². MLC positioning brings that to well under 78 × 78 m in about five seconds, whether your network produces it as Timing Advance or as lat/long. Once the aircraft is working the area using the MPDLS equipment, 10–15 m.
You can get the pieces from them. Billing, the MLC, the cell database and the network inventory each hold part of the answer, and none of them was built to assemble it in five seconds for a caller who is not your customer. REX is the layer that does that, on top of the systems you keep.
REX is deployed on premise, in your own infrastructure. No subscriber data leaves it and there is no vendor cloud in the path.
The legal assessment is made by the police and rescue services under emergency provisions, and it is reviewed afterwards. The operator acts on the request it receives. What REX adds is the record showing exactly what was requested, on what stated grounds, and what was disclosed. That record is what protects the operator.
REX for Emergency Response keeps no history at all, it answers from activation forward. The Historical Timing Advance add-on works on a bounded window, set with your legal team, for example 24-48 hours.
An annual license, priced on network size and the number of data sources connected. Emergency Response is the entry model: the smallest commitment that still delivers the whole workflow.
Manual emergency location requests require 24/7 coverage by specialized NOC staff and often take hours of manual aggregation. REX eliminates person-dependency and manual handovers by phone, automating the retrieval process and drastically reducing handling time and operational overhead.
Access is temporary, scoped to the case, revocable and logged. It is issued as a token for a specific operation, not as an account. There is no standing access and nothing to remember to remove.
REX provides role-based external access control. Telecom operators define exactly what data rescue officers can view and for how long, allowing emergency crews to stream location updates directly into their mapping systems over secure APIs without exposing core network infrastructure.
A few weeks from kickoff to full delivery. REX sits on top of the MLC and cell inventory you already run, so there is nothing to build before there is something to connect.
Yes. Every location request, search execution, and data delivery made through REX is automatically logged in an immutable audit trail. This provides full transparency for legal reviews and ensures compliance with European regulations such as NIS2 and data protection frameworks.
Volume is the wrong frame. This is readiness, like any other emergency capability. And the comparison is not against zero, it is against maintaining specialist availability for a workflow that today runs on a few named people.
They own the aircraft, the crew and the mobile base station on board; the operator owns the only data that tells that equipment where to work. Both halves, one chain, different owners.
The mechanism is the same wherever an operator can lawfully disclose location data to a coordinated rescue effort. What differs is who coordinates; civil rescue service, police or military and the legal route.
There are limits on parallel searches and they depend on your MLC vendor. The REX Platform can run multiple searches in parallell.
Yes. REX supplies the MLC positioning the airborne base station works from, over an API built for rescue services.
REX exports the position as a file and it reaches the crew by messaging or radio. Slower, and the reason the API exists, but it means an integration timeline or temporary outage never blocks an operation.
The next call will come. The crew will already be in the air.
Five seconds to a position, two integrations to start.