App Provides Personal Security in Campus

App Provides Personal Security in Campus

personal security

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Students may feel unsafe when they walk around the university campus at night, for fear they might be the target of a violent attack. A new app allows the local police to monitor the students from distance and help immediately in case of emergency, providing personal security to students.

Police at the BYU university in Utah, USA came up with the SafeWalks app, which can be accessed by the student’s phone, using the university login information, confirming their phone number and then tapping on a map to confirm their destination.

The app will send a text message informing them their SafeWalk is started, and then campus police can monitor their progress. Police will receive an alert when the user’s velocity rapidly increases (to signal getting into a car), if it’s taken them too long to get to their location or if the user has strayed too far from the path to their location. Police can then text or call a user to check that they’re safe. Outdoor cameras at BYU can also monitor students’ progress.

The app also includes an emergency button users can push to quickly get someone there.

“It gives us a method where if they do feel unsafe or in an unsafe situation and they hit that emergency button, we know exactly where they are, we know who they are and we can communicate with them very quickly,” said Steve Goodman, the manager of the BYU Police Technology and Communications Center.

Regarding privacy, according to heraldextra.com, the app does not track users’ locations when they are not using the SafeWalk function.

Goodman said campus police had previously looked at commercially available apps to conduct virtual SafeWalks, but preferred to put it into the existing app students already use to do things such as check their class schedules, see what food is being served for lunch that day and track down the closest restroom.

If there’s an emergency, campus police or a building security officer can be on the scene within three minutes. At night, Goodman said officers are usually in vehicles or on bikes and can get there faster, or a nearby building security officer can see what’s going on.

Work on the app was conducted by students in collaboration with BYU University Police and the Office of Information Technology.