A screenshot from a recent CrowdGuard presentation shows the app’s user interface. In cases of danger, the user gets an alert that displays information about another user in need of help. (CrowdGuard)
India has witnessed some harrowing acts of sexual and gender-based violence in recent years, some occurring in front of witnesses who watched, but did nothing. To combat this apathy, a social enterprise has come up with a crowdsourced solution that harnesses a trusted community to help people under attack.
Philip Sunil Urech has seen it all before, especially in India. “I observed a lot of situations … where people were actually requiring help,” he said, but bystanders and civilians passing by simply ignored the situation.
“I later learned that this was a cultural norm,” said the CEO of Crowdtect, a for-profit firm that develops human emergency response systems. People are taught from an early age “not to interfere” with others beyond their extended family “even if they are facing a very hard time or are in real danger.”
Inspired by the experience, Sunil co-founded CrowdGuard, a smartphone and Internet of Things (IoT) platform that mobilizes a community of trained students, volunteer organizations, commercial venues, and work places to respond quickly in emergency situations.
“Every user is a potential helper,” he told Techtonics, “but every user also potentially can reach out for help.”
Amit Ratnakar, Crowdtect UI Designer, works on the CrowdGuard app interface, in West Delhi, India. (CrowdGuard)
The mobile app connects all of these communities and offers users several easy ways to send out an emergency appeal when in danger. A user can press an emergency button, pull out the headphone jack, or press the power button three times to send an emergency alert.
The alert sends the location and identity of the person in danger to the community. Users in proximity can meet up with others as they navigate to the scene. And if potential helpers are farther away, the app increases the search radius to alert the nearest available members of the community to the danger.
Once on the scene, the crowd serves as a witness and a potential deterrent to the assault until police arrive. A chat function gives all users an all-clear alert when the situation is resolved. And a built-in mechanism keeps track of related police work.
The platform consists of several other layers, including education and compliance.
The education side is crucial to changing the bystander effect. Bystanders in a large crowd are unlikely to take action in an emergency either because they believe others will act or because they would rather wait to take the cue from those around them. CrowdGuard helps users understand crowd dynamics and raises awareness about safe intervention, citizen rights, sexual and gender-based violence, and filing complaints with police.
CrowdGuard storytellers Leena Wadhwa (L) and Garima Bansal (C) engage college students in New Delhi about the CrowdGuard app and their personal role in providing community safety as active bystanders. (CrowdGuard)
On the compliance side, the platform ensures that local laws against sexual harassment are being observed.
“We support these communities in becoming compliant with the POSH Act – the Prevention of Sexual Harassment Act of 2013 – which obligates basically every organization in India to implement certain measures to prevent sexual harassment,” said Sunil. “And we did that in order to leverage the inter-personal trust and [assist] communities.”
But reaching out for help on smartphones has its limitations, he said. “We are sometimes facing the issue that smartphones which run CrowdGuard applications and which connect to the CrowdGuard platform have no power left after a long day … or we have the issue that there is no mobile phone network.”
While the app also uses SMS messaging as a backup for emergency alerts, Sunil believes using an IoT device to house CrowdGuard is a better alternative.
A wearable IoT device running on a small battery and very little energy can reach farther if the user is underground and can connect over longer distances, he said. Crowdtect’s device, still in development, would not be tethered to a smartphone.
“We have to put it in a shell,” he added. “Most probably it will become an amulet that you wear around your neck or attach it to your bag. And we’re having two trigger mechanisms.”
The technology is still being tested for reliability, but it is in the final stages of development. Crowdtect has just wrapped up an eight-week mentoring program in Washington with PeaceTech Accelerator, a partnership between PeaceTech Lab, C5 Accelerate, and Amazon Web Services dedicated to scaling startups around the world.
“They are preparing for launch, virtualizing the existing education parts,” he said. “We are in the pilot stage, and we are increasing the network of community partners. … So once we launch, we have a minimal density in the urban areas of Delhi, and we are kind of building up.”
Sunil hopes CrowdGuard will have a “social impact on the ground” and help build a network of safe spaces which would benefit everyone, even if they’re not connected through the application.
