112, European emergency number

Twenty-seven years after its establishment, less than half of European citizens know about it and only 45% use it. It is 112, the European Single Emergency Number, available for free in all states from landlines and mobile phones: a first-level operations room that forwards calls to second-level ones. An initiative that, as evidenced by the latest EU Report on the implementation status of the NUE 112, is struggling to take off, and not just due to technical difficulties. In Italy, 112 (insiders call it "uno-uno-due") is currently operational only in Lombardy, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Liguria, Piedmont, Aosta Valley, eastern Sicily, and Rome, and is expanding to Lazio, Marche, Umbria, and Tuscany. Where the NUE is active, calls to one of the traditional emergency numbers are automatically directed to the single call center which: locates the request, compiles a "digital card" of the person requesting assistance, and, most importantly, filters inappropriate requests. Almost half of calls to emergency numbers are for information requests or other non-urgent reasons; the NUE call center "forwards" to the Carabinieri, police, fire brigade, ambulances, etc. only calls related to real emergencies that require intervention. In Italy, 112 can also be activated via an "official" smartphone app: it's called Where Are U, and it automatically transmits some data about the caller to 112, including telephone numbers entered by the person themselves as emergency contacts. The app can be downloaded from a dedicated website of the Lombardy region, here.