Guardium

Physical safety and security is essential for everyone—yet four billion people have no access to on-call emergency services such as 911 in the United States. This paper calls for the formation of a decentralized emergency response grid that would be more widely accessible, faster, proximal, scalable, user-friendly and technically advanced than any existing network. Like the creation of ride-sharing services like Uber, Smartphone ubiquity is a precondition for the establishment of such a global network. But the emergence of protocol-based decentralized organizations, distributed ledgers, cryptographic currencies fundamentally shift the economics of providing such a global service. Services like Filecoin and CIVIC have demonstrated that a new class of Global Public Utility provider that is decentralized and protocol-based enables the creation of a unified decentralized network that evolves and updates through its governance framework. Distributed ledger technology can provide an immutable record of responses to emergencies for auditability, accountability and trust. Finally the availability of cryptographic tokens and smart contracts enables a framework for establishing protective relationships, compensating responders and rewarding positive behavior within the network. No government is capable of providing a global network, yet the economic benefit of having a single, final, global provider is evident when considering the user experience of multiple competing networks during an emergency situation.