Hyderabad, March 2 (IANS) Emergency Management Research Institute (EMRI), a leader in emergency response services, has signed a knowledge sharing agreement with the City of Austin in Texas, one of the best performers in running the ‘911′ emergency. The City of Austin has become a strategic partner with ‘108′, the service run by EMRI, which intends to save one million lives a year in India by 2010.

EMRI will now be able to share knowledge and processes on emergency management with the Combined Transportation Emergency and Communication Centre (CTECC) that runs ‘911′ in Austin.

The company and Austin will participate in several exchange programmes that will help study each other’s operations and thus share best practices in improving emergency repose services.

The other areas of focus are research and academics, said Pete Collins, chief information officer in the City of Austin, who signed the pact with Venkat Changavalli, CEO of EMRI.

Collins was impressed with the work being done by EMRI, especially its teaching and training activities. He, however, stressed the need to educate people to make way for ambulances on roads.

“In Austin, if people see an ambulance, they all move aside to make way for it. But here I found ambulances stuck in traffic. Every second is important in a medical emergency,” he said.

“You have the best technology here but better infrastructure is required. Traffic management is a big challenge,” he said.

CTECC in Austin is sophisticated and integrated public safety facility where the police, fire and emergency management technicians worked in an area spread over 80,000 sq ft.

Venkat Changavalli said ‘108′ had saved 25,000 lives since its launch on August 1, 2005.

With 502 ambulances and 3,000 employees, EMRI, launched under Satyam Foundation, run by Satyam Computer Services Ltd, covers the entire state of Andhra Pradesh.

Under its plans to expand its services to the entire country, it recently started operations in Gujarat with 80 ambulances.

He said EMRI would soon commence operations in Uttarakhand. By the end of this year, EMRI would have covered four States with 3,000 ambulances.