Lampposts along Beijing streets will soon have another function - effectively help the police locate you in cases of emergency.

The Beijing lamppost controlling center is working on numbering all the lampposts in the city and putting their geographic information in a GPS-connected database, the Beijing Times reports. With that, the police force can accurately locate someone if he or she can tell them the number of the nearest lamppost, which will be printed on a black and yellow placard.

A lamppost on Beijing's Fucheng Road is tagged with a number, which is expected to help police locate people in need of emergency help. (photo: cnsphoto)

The project has so far covered 20,000 lampposts and will be completed at the end of November, the report says.

When completed, the system will be accessible to ambulances as well as traffic and public security centers.

(CRI June 24, 2008)