The Emergency Ready App's home screens, in the order of English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese from left (Screenshot of Emergency Ready App)
The Emergency Ready App's home screens, in the order of English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese from left (Screenshot of Emergency Ready App)

Situations requiring emergency response to be shared with local authorities; drones to be deployed for effective safety response

The Ministry of Interior and Safety announced Tuesday that alerts sent through the Emergency Ready App will soon be available in 19 languages from August 2025, as part of the ministry’s key policy plans to make emergency information more accessible.

The Emergency Ready App is run by the Ministry of Interior and Safety, which provides multilingual support for 36 emergency services, including emergency alerts, guides to safety, information on embassies, fire stations and police stations, as well as the location of civil defense shelters.

Since August 2024, the ministry has expanded its service to be available in five different languages. It has gone from being available only in English and Chinese to including alerts in Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese since last year.

The 14 languages expected to be added in August this year include Russian, French and Arabic.

With the new service, the Interior Ministry stated that it looks forward to more than 2.4 million people benefiting from the service, an increase from the 1.7 million people the app currently benefits.

Additionally, to enhance the effectiveness of emergency response efforts, the ministry is preparing to launch a pilot program in late 2025 to improve information sharing with local authorities. This initiative will enable real-time transmission of emergency call data to local government situation rooms through the Interior Ministry’s integrated emergency call system.

Through the integrated emergency call system, the ministry will link fire, police and coast guard situation rooms with local government situation rooms, where real-time data such as security camera footage and emergency calls will be shared.

In emergencies deemed necessary, the Interior Ministry added that it would respond to disasters by deploying drones on site, to help authorities view safety incidents from above and to determine safety measures deemed effective and needed for the particular safety incident.

As deploying drones will require revisions or new regulations for operation, a governmentwide consultative body, comprising the Interior Ministry, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Ministry of Science and ICT as well as the national fire and police agencies, will be established to promote technological developments of such safety incident-responsive drones.