0n click, we often look out for technology which can help save peoples lives. For example, we went to rwanda to look at how drones were speeding up deliveries of blood and recently closer to home, i looked at how the response times of the air ambulance in london were being improved by better connectivity. If you live in the developed world, youll probably take it for granted that you can dial the emergency number, someone will answer, and help will arrive. Well, in kenya, thats not the case. In the capital nairobi alone, there are more than 50 different numbers for different Ambulance Services, and if you need a fire engine, well, thats at least a dozen more. And even then, there is no guarantee theyll be able to get to you. Well, kate russell has been to meet a couple of entrepreneurs who have had the great idea of amalgamating them all into one service. Think uber for Emergency Services. For most living in a modern metropolis, calling an ambulance involves dialling a single short code. But in a city more than 6 million people, nairobi has no functioning Central Emergency number. With five Public Hospitals and dozens of private hospitals and clinics all operating independently, you have to know who to call if you need an ambulance here and hope theres someone on duty to pick up. Caitlin and maria run a start up in nairobi hoping to address this problem. You just take for granted 911 exists and we did as well both of us had lived here for years and we never even considered it, and wed worked in health, and i never even thought what i would do in an emergency. We just started asking people have you seen an ambulance before . Who has an ambulance . We would go and meet and find ambulances in parking lots and we started a really simple tally of how many ambulances we could find. We realised there were so many ambulances and nobody has any idea where they are. Flares aim is to connect Emergency Response vehicles on an uber style platform that can route calls to an operator that can get their quickest. Get there quickest. When the call comes in, i get to know the patients location, i click on the location. We can see all the vehicles that are within my range. I can select the Ambulance Service, which is six minutes away. Lets click on the Ambulance Service im going to dispatch, it gives me the Contact Number and their location and the estimated time. It also gives me the direction route for them. So youve been using this system through states of emergency for example, the first elections . For example, we used it for the election of 2017, and we also had a backup for the radios. We had the Emergency Services covering all the emergency situations. Sorry, sorry . Leah, emergency a busy city hospital, we left patrick to his work and headed out onto the streets to see first hand the traffic problems that make this kind of operator routeing a lifesaver. This was especially important when violence broke out during the october elections. Flares ambulances were 33 busier attending to emergencies in these hotspots. The response times weve seen have gone down from 162 minutes which is the average, which is nearly three hours, which is insane to about 15 20 minutes. So far, the platform has 30 ambulances online with a goal to reach at least 50 by the end of january next year. An annual membership fee gives patients access to the emergency hotline and covers the cost of any call outs which otherwise would have had to be paid by credit card before an ambulance is dispatched. The fee is currently around 15 20 but flare say this might change as the service matures. Eventually, flare wants to add more concierge style features for its members like real time updates and treatment information. The data being collected might also prove useful to help co ordinate Better Service across the city. One of the things we recently learned is theres a lack of ambulances between 7am and 9am, and the reason for that is that the night team is handing over to the day team, so all providers are doing that shift change, so theres a delay in that happening, so then there arent enough ambulances online to respond to the emergencies. You can use that information and go to all the providers and say maybe staggeryourtimes, right . Completely, or make the handover process more efficient such that that doesnt even occur. Fire means even bigger problems for emergency call outs in nairobi. As well as the fractured Co Ordination issues seen with ambulances, there is a desperate shortage of both trucks and Water Supplies. Tragedies like this in nairobis vast clothes market gikomba are all too common and often left burning for much longer than they should be because of a simple lack of access to resources. 999 goes directly to the police headquarters, the Police Control room. Once you call the Police Control room, they start looking for the nearest Ambulance Service or the nearest fire service. Theres no radio linkage anywhere. The phones they have belong to individuals. The fire and Ambulance Service are controlled separately by different players. Ict fire and rescue is the first Firefighting School of its kind in kenya. I went to visit them and got to try out some training. Flare is working with the school to add as many fire trucks as possible to their nairobi coverage, as well as locating available public and private Water Supplies to add to the map. There are enough hydrants in nairobi theoretically, they were planned for, but a lot of the hydrants have been built on top of, so were surveying nairobi to see where there are publicly available hydrants and where their private hydrants are that we can actually tap into. At this stage, its unclear how the membership funding model will play out for fire cover as call out costs could be radically higher and more variable than ambulance work. Flare has high hopes of becoming the 911 call equivalent for the whole of kenya in the future. Kate russell in nairobi solving a problem that really need solving. Kate russell in nairobi solving a problem that really needs solving. I have to say thats not always the case in the world of technology take, for example, smart cities, which we havent really proved we actually need so far. But authorities in canada have teamed up with a massive tech name to develop a smart neighbourhood that it says will massively improve sustainability and affordability. Paul carter has been to toronto to find out more about googles grand designs. Googles Parent Company alphabet has its fingers in many technological pies from home automation, search, life sciences, and autonomous vehicles, but now the company has an even bigger idea. It wants to build a whole new city. Well, sort of. Authorities in ca nadas largest city, toronto, have announced a partnership with googles stablemate Sidewalk Labs to design a new waterfront area known as quayside. Sidewalk labs say they want to see a city built from the internet up. What does that look like . The streets will come alive with a vitality that we expect from sort of the greatest urban environments in a way that has never actually been seen before. The plans include modular buildings that will automatically adapt to wind and rain, robot delivery services, underground rubbish disposal trains, heated roads to melt the snow, digital navigation systems, smart traffic, self driving buses. So far, sojetsons, but will any ordinary people actually be able to afford to live there . Whats really interesting when you sit down with this and walk people through it, it is a big part of what they want to do and a big part of these advertisements they present for themselves is this will lower the cost of living. Theyre trying to find ways to reduce your cost of mobility, so, for example, you dont actually have to have a car at all. These plans also rely on data, and lots of it. Sensors in all aspects of the development, buildings, roads, open spaces, will measure how and when people use the environment. In a week when it was revealed android phones were sending location data back to google, should people be concerned about their privacy . They have a profit motive, they have a Business Purpose for existence that you have to make sure at all times you safeguard the Public Interest and thats our job on everything we do. They made it very clear that even though they are part of the alphabet organisation, which includes other technologies like waymo, their driverless car autonomous vehicle, they are under no pressure or no directive from alphabet to have to use their technology. They believe that to fulfil their objectives, they want to get the best in class, the most Innovative Technologies wherever they may be. Both waterfront toronto and Sidewalk Labs have a year to thrash out the finer details of the plan. Any time you do anything complicated, i was deputy mayor of new york for the six years right after 9 11, my response included rebuilding the World Trade Center site, youre never going to get unanimity, but thats what the democratic process is all about, putting ideas out there, getting feedback, adjusting them and ultimately hopefully winning over enough people that you can move forward. At the moment, this smart city of the future exists only in drawings and documents. City planners and technologists from around the world will be watching with interest to see if googles grand plans ever make it from concept to construction. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week that us prosecutors charged an iranian man with hacking into hbo, leaking scripts for everyones favourite tv show, game of thrones, and demanding over £4 million in ransom. Elsewhere, skype disappeared from app stores in china after the government said it did not comply with the local law. The long running Net Neutrality debate took another turn this week as us regulators rolled back the laws that were brought in under president 0bama. The chairman of the federal Communications Commission said the changes would stop the federal government micromanaging the internet. Critics argue, however, the changes could lead to unequal access to the internet. And humans and machine have once again been pitted against each other, this time in the battle of the drone pilots. Researchers at nasas jet Propulsion Lab set up a time trial between their Artificial Intelligence and drone pilot ken loo. Loo was the winner when it came to speed but was less consistent overall than the ai system. It wouldnt be click news without a robot. This fine specimen stands and 5ft1 and calls itself t hr3. The bot is designed to mirror the movements of its human overlord and may one day be used in locations too dangerous for humans. Thats all fine until it gets fed up and goes on strike, citing an inhospitable working environment. Earlier in the show, we saw how a smart city can be built from the ground up. But you still need to be able to find your way around it. So ive been looking at some of the latest augmented reality that aims to help. But first, i need to go and find the man who knows all about it. But hes not the only person im meeting. Hotstepper is a wayfinding app that uses this scantily clad character to guide you to your designated destination. It is doing so by combining ar, geolocation data, and mapping, and while its not the only app to overlay directions on the real world, it certainly has its unique character. Hes just doing a dance for some people that are walking past the pub. You must be luke. Hiya. Lara, good to meet you. You too. So why am i following this man around . Why have you designed him looking like this . After the year we have had in 2017, i think we all needed some humour so itjust makes it more interesting to get from a to b. There are a lot of navigation apps out there. Why are people going to choose this one . Some people find maps on their phones quite complicated to use. We have also put in gigantic 3 d arrows at the end of the road so you can follow him and can you also see from the arrows where you want to go. There are some challenges we dont actually know where a road begins and a pavement stops, so we have to kind of do our best to calculate where we think that is. To make it look as believable as possible, what were doing is try to find out where we think you are, what the weather is like where you are, so if its a sunny day or a cloudy day, and then specifically the location of the sun. And if we can work out where the sun is, we can then render his shadow naturally to where to should be. But when you are not having fun on foot then maybe you are trying to find a place to leave your car. Ar measuring app air measure are prototyping a function to help you parallel park. Not something you would want any inaccuracy on. In the meantime, it can be used for measuring furniture, creating a floor plan, or seeing how tall you are. But if you are more focused on finding your way around and have taken a shine to hotstepper, just dont lose your friend or you may lose your way. Ok, you cannot miss the arrow but where has my man gone . Where is he . The way we talk online has changed in the last decade and im not talking about the rise of social Networks Like facebook and twitter, but the even bigger explosion in mobile messaging apps like whatsapp, line and wechat depending on where you are in the world. Since 2014 we have been using them even more than the big social networks. And with all of those people spending all of that time chatting, rather than browsing, it is not surprising that companies are desperate to talk to us too. And i can only mean one thing bots. Chat bots. And plenty of them. Modern bots promise to connect with us and understand us in more ways than ever before and that means they could potentially do more than just sell us stuff. For example, they may even change lives. Dave lee has been looking at a unique project in seattle which is using chat bots to help women working in the sex industry to stay safe. This is aurora avenue, north seattle, a long, straight road full of liquor stores, worn out car dealerships, and cheap motels. It is known as one of the traps in the area and that means it is a popular place where women would come and be involved in street prostitution and men come to basically drive up and solicit for sex. As day passes into night, we see only a handful of working women walk by. Just because this street isnt as busy as it perhaps once was doesnt mean this business has gone away and in fact it is quite the opposite. The scale of the job to save these women who are now behind closed doors is incredibly overwhelming. Like just about every business you can think of, the sex trade is now almost completely online. Powered by listings websites which do little to prevent abuses. It makes the women caught up in this dark world much less visible than ever before. I was in the life for ten years. I had a pimp, it was very violent, i have a quota i had to meet every day, and if i didnt make the quota, there were punishments for that. I stayed sometimes in hotels for weeks, months at a time, the same room, not leaving, maybe just to smoke a cigarette or go to the vending machine to get a snack. Those four walls and i remember the tv playing just so there was noise going, right . I do remember sitting in there and thinking the whole world had forgotten about me. And what would have shifted if i have looked down on my phone and someone would have said hey, this is jackie from rest, i used to be in the life. I have resources, do you want to chat . Real escape from the sex trade, or rest, is a group that seeks out and helps women trapped in the sex industry. This is a centre for those taken out of the life. It is temporary, safe accommodation. The organisation is backing a new initiative developed with the help of microsoft that uses Chatbot Technology to intercept anyone considering buying sex. The team places fake sex ads on popular sites. When a potential customer texts the number seeking to buy, it is a chatbot that replies. In this case we have set up the bot so it is simulating a 15 year old trafficking victim. This is asking me questions like how old am i, 100 per hour, what service are you looking for. We work with survivors of trafficking to ask them how a conversation like this would go . What would you say . What are the tipoffs that this would maybe not be a bot but a Law Enforcement officer . It has told you it is 15, how does that sound . Thats where the hammer drops. Heres the message. Wow. That is a really shocking feeling. Somebody who thinks they are anonymous and can go on the internet and buy another human being, it is a big wake up call. The bot isnt being used to arrest people. Instead it is intended to work as a deterrent. Similar Artificial Intelligence technology is being used to scrape websites and reach women who may be need help. 0utreach comes via a text message, something that is much easier to hide from a pimp than talking to a Charity Worker in the street. With text outreach, we can reach so many more individuals on these phone numbers that we are pulling from online ads and when a girl gets a text message, she can respond to it in a time and a place that is safe for her to do so. Impressed with what theyve seen so far, Law Enforcement agencies in seattle are now using the tech with encouraging results. There are thousands of buyers online at any time of the day or night. When we post a fake ad posing as a person involved in prostitution we will get 250 responses in the first two hours and there is no way that Law Enforcement has the capacity to respond to that. A chatbot allows us to connect with and deter all of those buyers online at any time. Weve never able to do that. Yet this issue needs a more permanent solution to stop websites being used to sell sex. That is what is being