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Smart-phone Services for Emergency Response Preparedness based on User Control (self escort)

Detailed Technology Description

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Others

*Abstract

Many people recognize that they are more vulnerable to a hostile person while traveling on foot between safe and familiar locations. The knowledge of this high risk environment lets people make preparations in advance of a possible event, but some people either cannot or choose not to do so. Preparation methods for defense (self-defense classes, Tasers, or pepper spray) must be made well before a person may need them and usually at a monetary cost. An alternative approach would be to alert law enforcement to be aware of a possible situation. While an active and threatening situation defines the requirements of a 911 call, this type of an alert to a potential future event is a mechanism that is still quite vague and not practically enforced as of today. This disclosure discusses research by computer science students and faculty into a mobile application that provides a structured, practical and reasonable process for preparing law enforcement to respond to a probable emergency. This widely available and cheap application would allow police and security personnel to react immediately and with more information to a possible event even without a 911 call from the person in danger. This is possible by the combination of these features: a.A mobile application that is accessed through default app store for the phone. Installation will include acceptance of the application's term of use and a small tutorial about how the application works and functions while active. b.The application will establish and maintain a secure connection (HTTPS) to a server that is managed by law enforcement or a law enforcement dispatch center. This server will support mobile clients that are in the vicinity of the law enforcement's responding boundaries. c.The application will constantly monitor the user's GPS location. If this location is outside of the responding boundaries a Self-Escort server, it will alert the user that they are outside of officially supported locations. d.The application's main display includes an interactive map of the area along with the user's location. This map can be used to select a destination for the user to travel towards. e.The application will show the user's internally calculated safety level along a bar with a slider. This slider will not be movable by the user, but continually shows the user's safety level. The user may press buttons that indicate that they are safe or unsafe, and their safety level will change to reflect that. While the application is running, the safety level will change slightly according to how the user is moving, where walking speed indicates normalcy and safe situations and movement that indicate running or stopping indicates unsafe situations. These will be calculated using the updates of the smartphone's GPS. f.The application will also include a low-priority help button to alert police to a situation that does not need an immediate emergency response. Law enforcement dispatch will be able to establish contact (call or message) and respond to the application's user at a time chosen by the dispatch operator. This could be an event like a broken bicycle or a flat tire.g.The server's main view will be accessed through a web service, which requires verified and permitted law enforcement credentials to view. h.The web service for viewing clients that are connected to the server will display clients by location on an interactive map. The safety levels of the clients will be indicated by color and selecting a client will bring a full profile of information the server has on the client. i.The web service will also allow the administrator or operator to send a specific message or notify the application's user that police are currently responding. The message or notification will be briefly displayed to the user in this case. j.The server functionality can be a map or a simple table illustrating GPS locations of the user. Dots with different colors maybe used to represent users depending on their safety levels.k.Once the subject's safety level goes dangerously low, a vibrate signal is generated on the subject's phone. This message is to tell them to turn off the app if they forgot to do so. They can do that by clicking on Stop button in the client side.l.The sever side will also have data tables that will allow them to see records for each subject, and will enable them sort the details depending on criteria like proximity, age, alert level and so on.

*Principal Investigator

Name: Sriram Chellappan, Assistant Professor

Department:

Name: Srinivas Thandu

Department:

Name: Patrick Sullivan

Department:

Country/Region

USA