That dark alley behind your college that leads to your home, the tea shop outside the campus where groups of men sit around passing lewd remarks or that one evening when you walked home and felt like you were being followed — sometimes, the most dangerous areas are the ones we frequent, either on our way back from college or inside the campus at night. Safety around educational institutions or inside the dark pockets of their large campuses is not always discussed. However, it’s not all dark and murky. Some personal safety apps developed in India can be used to dispel fear and make students feel protected even after dark.
SafecityElsa D’Silva, Saloni Malhotra and Surya Velamuri launched the Safecity app on 26 December, 2012, just a few days after the Delhi rape incident when they realised something had to be done to break the silence over sexual harassment.
“We are interested in what happened, where (exact location) and when (date and time) so that we can aggregate the data based on location and look for larger trends. Name and email are optional,” says Elsa. The app and online interface offers about 13 categories of harassment and abuse that the user can choose from and then describe the incident. “People who do not have Internet access can call 09015 510510 and it will get disconnected on the second ring. Our team will call back within 24 hours to get the person's report,” she adds.
The information on the map is collated to showcase location-based trends, thereby helping communities use crowdsourced data to identify local issues. “Today, if you were travelling to a city, you would have no idea about what to expect in terms of safety. We are building a database which will give you an indication of what kind of harassment takes place at what location. College students can report their personal experiences of harassment. They can sign up for alerts based on location or category of harassment or zoom in to our crowd map to understand what the hotspot is all about,” says Elsa. In a large campus, the app can be used to map the data on lonely or less-frequented spots. This can further be used to decipher trends of abuse and harassment, allowing authorities to solve the issue.
SOS – Stay Safe!The SOS app can be used by anyone facing an assault or when they are being stalked, an accident, attempted burglary and so on. “Most people have their phones with them at all times and text a lot. Taking this into account, the app ensures that emergencies are dealt with quickly and discreetly,” says Farah Nesargi of SOS.
Since it is not practical to dial a number or launch an app during an emergency, SOS uses a more intuitive method. When the app is installed, it allows users to enter a list of emergency contacts and all they have to do is shake their phone or press the power button thrice, in quick succession, to activate the app in emergencies. “Funnily enough, one of our developers casually mentioned that in stressful situations, women tend to flap their hands! This was our eureka moment and we used this action to allow the app to send periodic messages to emergency contacts,” says Farah. “The ‘shake limit’ can be customised. For example, a young person may set a vigorous shake trigger while an old person may set a rather meek shake.”
When triggered, the app sends the GPS location of the user and the battery level of their phone to specific contact persons at periodic intervals. Students can use the app with unnoticeable or minimal effort during emergencies. They can pre-enter the campus hotline and emergency numbers too. “Campuses can provide immediate assistance this way,” adds Farah. This is useful for students who are new to a city and travel through unfamiliar territory everyday. It is also useful for those studying abroad.
The emergency contacts receive requests for help on any device — not just smartphones. “The fact that you don’t need to launch the app before clicking an alert button is what makes this app click. We are also thinking of adding a feature where the app will sound a loud siren, if there is no network connection when triggered. This will hopefully scare the perpetrators away,” says Farah.
SafetiPinSafetiPin collects data on safety on a large scale level and quantifies it so that change can be measured. It has features like pinning hospitals, maps and areas where harassment takes place. It also has an extensive safety audit feature that measures the safety of streets.
A safety audit is conducted every 100 metres on any street after dark. Each audit is scored based on nine parameters that the user answers like light, security, proximity to public transport and so on. While eight parameters are objective, the app also takes ‘feelings’ into account as the last, subjective parameter. “Students can use this to point out unsafe areas in their campus or wherever they have faced sexual harrassment. The app also allows them to see the existing data about the area and the city, and this can be particularly useful for new people,” says Kalpana.
After a series of audits of an area are submitted, the app automatically cumulates the individual scores into an overall safety score. This would also be useful in large campuses. “It can also be used to point out specific things such as poor lighting,” she adds. “The app has been active for a year now and has spread to six cities — Delhi NCR, Guwahati, Chennai, Bangalore, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Pune.” SafetiPin is also being used in Bogota, Colombia and Jakarta, Indonesia.
