TempoLife › Features › Defibrillators and cardiac arrest response › open-data
The open map, and why we do not publish a device list
National registers are closed, OpenStreetMap is open and incomplete, and a copied list goes stale in months. The honest position, the licence rules, and how to add the cabinet outside your own front door.
CPR in sixty seconds
- Unresponsive and not breathing normally? Gasping is not breathing. Treat it as a cardiac arrest.
- Call 112 (113 in Norway). Speaker on, phone on the floor. Stay on the line — the dispatcher will coach you.
- Push hard and fast in the centre of the chest: 5–6 cm in an adult, 100–120 per minute, letting the chest come all the way back up.
- Send somebody else for a defibrillator. Do not go yourself unless it is seconds away. Keep compressing.
- Turn the device on and do what it says. It decides whether to shock. After a shock, go straight back to compressions.
This is a reference written for bystanders, not a diagnosis, a training course or medical advice. It cannot tell you what is wrong with a particular person, and it does not replace the dispatcher on the other end of an emergency call — they can see what is near you and they will talk you through it. If you are worried about your own heart, or about a symptom, that is a conversation with a clinician rather than a page on a website.
Why there is no map of devices on this page
Three reasons, in order of seriousness. A defibrillator list decays fast — cabinets move, shops close, buildings are refurbished — and a pin that sends a runner to an empty wall in the third minute of an arrest is worse than no pin at all. The national registers that are kept current are not open data and cannot be copied. And the register that actually helps in an emergency is the dispatcher's, which is reached by calling, not by browsing. So this surface sends you to the register that matters in your country and spends its effort on the things that do not go stale.
What is open: OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap carries public defibrillators as nodes tagged emergency=defibrillator, with optional detail for the level, the indoor or outdoor placement, the opening hours, the access arrangements and a description of exactly where the cabinet is. Roughly 174,000 such objects existed worldwide when this page was last checked, and the OpenAEDMap project renders precisely that layer as a usable map. Coverage is very uneven: excellent in a few countries with organised import and survey efforts, thin in others, including parts of this region.
The licence, briefly
OpenStreetMap data is published under the Open Database Licence. In practice that means you may use and redistribute it, you must attribute OpenStreetMap and its contributors, and if you publish a derived database you must share it under the same terms. That is a workable licence for an app or a municipal map and it is why community AED maps can exist at all. It is also why data flowing the other way — from a national register into OSM — usually cannot happen without the register operator's explicit permission.
Adding the one outside your front door
It takes about two minutes with an OpenStreetMap account. Put a node at the cabinet, tag it emergency=defibrillator, and add what a stranger would need: whether it is indoors or outdoors, which floor, the opening hours if access is limited, and a plain description of the location. Do not invent details you have not checked, and do not add a device you have only heard about. Then register the same device in your national register, which is the step that reaches the dispatcher.
If you run a register and want it used
The most useful thing a national register operator can do for its own coverage is publish an open, attributed extract, or agree an import route into OpenStreetMap. It costs nothing operationally, it does not compete with the dispatcher-facing database, and it puts the devices into every consumer map and app that exists. Where that has been done, community maps fill in the gaps and correct the errors for free.
Sources: OpenStreetMap tag emergency=defibrillator · taginfo — count of emergency=defibrillator objects · OpenAEDMap · OpenStreetMap copyright and licence · Open Database Licence (ODbL) · checked 2026-09-08
Frequently asked questions
Why does this site not show a map of defibrillators?
Because a copied device list goes out of date quickly and a stale pin costs time in the third minute of an arrest, and because the national registers that are kept current are not open data. Call 112 — the dispatcher can see what is near you.
Where can I see an open map of defibrillators?
OpenStreetMap carries them as emergency=defibrillator nodes, and the OpenAEDMap project renders that layer. Coverage varies a great deal by country and it is not a substitute for the national register.
Can I add a defibrillator to OpenStreetMap myself?
Yes, and it is welcome. Place a node at the cabinet, tag it emergency=defibrillator, and record the floor, whether it is indoors or outdoors, the access and the opening hours. Register it nationally as well.
How the system around it works
The chain of survival, link by link
Recognition and a call, early CPR, early defibrillation, advanced care and recovery. What each link is actually worth, which one the public owns, and where the chain breaks in practice.
What the survival numbers actually say
Roughly one in ten survives an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and the spread between towns is wider than the spread between treatments. How to read the statistics without being misled by them.
National registers, and getting your device into one
A defibrillator the dispatcher cannot see barely exists. What a national register is, which one is the real one in each country, why registration is free, and the paid look-alikes to avoid.
Volunteer responder systems
Denmark, Sweden and Norway alert trained volunteers by phone to arrests near them — one to fetch the defibrillator, one to start compressions. How the systems work, who can join, and what happens when your phone goes off.
Where public defibrillators actually are
The green sign with the heart and the lightning bolt, the places that reliably have one, the cabinets that are locked and the ones that are not, and what to do when you have thirty seconds to decide whether to go looking.
Everything on this subject
Before the emergency, there is a long quiet stretch
Blood pressure, resting heart rate, movement and sleep are the part of this you can act on for years beforehand. TempoLife keeps them in one place, free to start.