NUNAVUT - New technology scheduled to be delivered to all communities in Nunavut this month aim to make travelling on the land a little bit safer.

Ed Zebedee: Director of protection services says new emergency locators not a substitute for being prepared. - NNSL file photo

All 500 Spot Satellite Messengers could be distributed to communities across the territory by the end of March, director of protection services Ed Zebedee said. Each community will receive 20 units.

Fifteen units will be available for travellers to use for free while out on the land while the remaining five will be used by community search and rescue committees, Zebedee said.

Each unit is equipped with a "Help" button and a 911 button.

When either button is pushed, the signal is picked up via satellite and locks onto the user's GPS location, which is transmitted to a 24-hour control centre in the United States.

The control centre then e-mails or phones contact people in Iqaluit with the code number for the unit that was activated.

If the help button was pushed, contacts in Iqaluit receive an e-mail with a Google map showing the unit's location on their Blackberries. If the 911 button was pushed, they receive both the e-mail and a phone call from the control centre.

Each unit contains a contact list, which includes the email addresses and cell phone numbers of five contacts in the city, including himself, the search and rescue coordinator and the RCMP, Zebedee said.

"There are five separate, individual people," he said. "In the event of a help or a 911, if the first person doesn't answer, they'll go on down the list. We'll all get an e-mail regardless of us responding."

Once Iqaluit has received the code number, they contact the community where the unit is registered.

"They'll pull up their sign-out sheet and they'll know exactly who has it," Zebedee said.

The units for search and rescue teams have a track function that monitors the team's location during a search and rescue operation every 10 minutes for 24 hours, Zebedee said.

"We can see where they are and we can take a look at a map," he said.

Plans to make units available in communities have been in the works for about two years, Zebedee said. The Spot Satellite Messengers were tested in different communities before they were bought.

"We spent just about two years testing them before we purchased them," he said. "We didn't want to purchase something that worked in Iqaluit but not in Cambridge Bay."

The units were also put through their paces to see how they held up in Nunavut's extreme environment.

"We buried one in a snowbank for a couple days and left it there," Zebedee said. The units are waterproof and can function in – 40 C temperatures.

Iqaluit, Cambridge Bay and Rankin Inlet are scheduled to receive the first messengers as early as this week, Zebedee said.

"Our intent is to look at our numbers of searches by community and distribute them to communities that have had historically higher numbers of searches," he said.

Each unit costs approximately $115 and activating all 500 units for a year cost $63,000, Zebedee said.

"That covers the satellite that monitors these things and also the company's cost of developing the program and having people on call 24/7," he said.

With an average of anywhere from three to nine searches per weekend in the spring, Zebedee said the units are invaluable.

"We spent a lot of money on them," he said. "Our hope is if they're used once, they've paid for themselves."

Zebedee also said while the units are helpful, they should be considered an additional piece of equipment and not a replacement for being prepared.

"The big message is be prepared when you go out, don't just rely on these," he said. "They are a tool in your tool box to assist you."