Mexico City, Mexico - Last week, Mexico City’s government announced the "066CDMX" app, the new smartphone application which aims to improve the current emergency system by giving prompt assistance to users.

Nine out of 10 Mexico City residents own a smartphone, Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera Espinosa said. By downloading the application to their phones, users will be able to request assistance from the police, firefighters, or rescue personnel, who, in turn, will respond quicker than if users had done it via telephone call.

Whenever citizens dials 066 it takes approximately two minutes to provide assistance.

The new application will cut this time in half by providing assistance in 60 seconds. The application also has the option of creating an emergency contact network of five people that can be notified in the case of an emergency, he said.

Users can also choose the option to ask for help silently, either due to circumstances or to a physical impediment. The application will send a silent signal to the 066 operation center along with the user’s location tracked by the phone’s GPS system.

Mexico City will greatly benefit from this significant technological development, Mancera Espinosa said. However, the city’s government needs to raise awareness among the population about the consequences of using the emergency services for false alarms, he added.

"There have been troubling figures regarding the number of false alarms," he said. "Out of approximately 70,000 daily calls to the 066 system, we have registered only 5,000 that are real emergencies. This means that a large number of calls mobilize the city’s security personnel but they turn out to be false. They are not reporting an emergency, it is a joke."

He added that between January and November this year, there were little over a million calls to 066.

"This is a service offered to the city and to all of us," Mancera Espinosa said. "Let’s ensure it is used for what it is meant for."

General director of the "C4 Emergency Assistance and Citizen Protection Center," Gerardo González, said that when 066 operators receive a report about an emergency, they will already have general information about the user since a form needs to be filled out upon registration. It will also be possible to attach an image of the incident.

"This application is almost equivalent to carrying a panic button," he said.