A Mobile Application for Women’s Safety

WoSApp

Authors: Dhruv Chand, Sunil Nayak, Karthik S. Bhat,

Shivani Parikh, Yuvraj Singh, Amita Ajith Kamath

Motivation● 35 percent of women around the world have been victims of

sexual violence (World Health Organization - 2013)

● A woman is assaulted in India every three minutes (The National

Crime Records Bureau of India)

● The current system does not enable police to help these

women effectively

Related Work● iMace - shaking phone produces a high pitched alarm,

notifies friends and law enforcement

● VithU - pushing the power button twice sends messages to

pre-selected contacts

● Nirbhaya - in-app button sends user’s GPS coordinates to

pre-selected contacts

● Direct tie-up with the local police (Mangalore)

● Free of charge

● Open-source

How WoSApp Stands Apart

We needed a mobile application that:

1. Has a straightforward user interface

2. Ensures the alert message is sent to the police

3. Allows the user to activate alert discreetly

4. Monitors and reports crises locations

Problem Statement

Using the ApplicationThere are four main phases of operation of

the application:

● Input of emergency contacts

● Activation of the service

● Transmission of the emergency

message and call

● Police response

Interface Design● Need for simplicity, easy

access during crises.

● Home Page: three distinct

buttons - PANIC, Configure

Settings and About.

● Police station: Google Maps

interface.

Work Done

● Shake detection

● The back-end of the application

○ Portal receives the encoded text message and stores it in a database.

○ GPS coordinates plotted on a Google Maps interface.

○ Audio alert system added at the receiving portal.

● All work was open-sourced

App Development Stage● The development followed the Rapid Application Development model

● Used iterative, evolutionary prototyping

● High speed of development - aided collaboration with the local

(Mangalore) police

Image source: http://www-old.novulo.com/Rad.aspx

Technology Used● HTML/CSS and JavaScript

● Java

● PHP

● MySQL

● JSON

● PhoneGap API

● Android SDK

Image source: http://www.canon.co.uk

Conclusion● WoSApp: a straightforward solution in times of crisis

● Shake phone → Police receive required data

● Moral responsibility to society

● Beta version circulated in college

Potential Future Work

● Expand area of influence to a nationwide scale

● Voice activation/trigger, like “OK Google”

● Real time data analytics

● Tie-up with Project Jagriti

References…

● “iMace: Protecting Females from Sexual and Violent Offenders in a Community

via Smartphones,” by Chang et al

● VithU: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.startv.gumrah. Accessed

2015-06-01.

● Nirbhaya: Be Fearless: http://www.nirbhaya.mobi. Accessed 2015-06-01.

● “Rapid Application Development,” by James Martin

…

Thank you!