SafetiPin: an innovative mobile app to collect data on women's safety in Indian cities

Abstract

Women's safety is a key concern of governments and civil society today. In India, the issue has become prominent in the wake of the gang rape and murder in 2012. One of the key elements in addressing the lack of safety in cities is identifying the causes. SafetiPin, a mobile app, is one tool that has been developed to collect data on safety in cities. Building on the international methodology of safety audits, SafetiPin has transformed it into a mobile app that crowd sources data and information on insecurity in cities. Using SafetiPin, data have been collected in seven Indian cities. This article examines some of the data to understand what factors lead to lack of safety and insecurity in cities, and discusses future plans for the project.

La sécurité des femmes est une préoccupation clé pour les gouvernements et la société civile à l'heure actuelle. En Inde, cette question a pris le devant de la scène suite au viol collectif et au meurtre commis en 2012. L'un des éléments clés de la lutte contre l'insécurité dans les villes est l'identification des causes. SafetiPin, une application mobile, est un outil qui a été mis au point pour recueillir des données sur la sécurité dans les villes. Safetipin a pris comme base la méthodologie internationale des audits de sécurité et l'a transformée en une application mobile qui a fait appel à la communauté des personnes concernées pour recueillir des données et des informations sur l'insécurité dans les villes. Grâce à Safetipin, des données ont été recueillies dans sept villes indiennes. Cet article examine certaines des données pour comprendre quels sont les facteurs qui entraînent le manque de sécurité dans les villes et traite des plans futurs pour le projet.

Hoy en día y de manera significativa, tanto los gobiernos como la sociedad civil manifiestan su preocupación por la seguridad de las mujeres. En India, esta cuestión cobró mayor relevancia en 2012, cuando se produjo la violación tumultuaria y el posterior asesinato de una mujer. Uno de los aspectos considerados clave al momento de encarar la inseguridad en las ciudades consiste en identificar las causas de la misma. A este respecto, se creó la aplicación móvil SafetiPin, cuyo fin es recabar información sobre la seguridad urbana. Aprovechando la metodología empleada para la auditoría de seguridad existente a nivel internacional, SafetiPin la convirtió en una aplicación móvil que propicia la externalización abierta de la recopilación de datos e información [outsourcing] relativos a la inseguridad urbana. Mediante el uso de dicha aplicación, se han recogido datos pertinentes en siete ciudades de India. El presente artículo examina los datos recopilados con la intención de comprender los factores que generan inseguridad en las ciudades, analizando los planes existentes a futuro para el proyecto.

Key words:

• safety
• violence against women
• cities
• urban planning
• data
• safety audit

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Diva Dhar for contributing inputs to the data analysis.

Notes

1 Jagori started as a documentation, training, and communication centre to support feminist action in rural and urban areas of India. For more information, see http://jagori.org/ (last checked by the authors 10 December 2014).

2 Smartphone users are defined here as individuals who own and use smartphones, regardless of the number of smartphones each of those individuals might have.

3 The safety audit has been used extensively by UN Women, UN Habitat, Women in Cities International, the Huairou Commission, and the Women and Habitat Network of Latin America.

4 This visibility variable captures whether the person feels he or she can be seen on the street. This is the urban design principle known as ‘eyes on the street’. Jane Jacobs (1960), in her famous work on American cities, talked about how eyes on the street are key to making our streets usable and friendly. ‘Eyes on the street’ can be shops and windows that face the street, or vendors and others who occupy or can see public spaces on a regular basis.

5 A Likert scale consists of several statements (items) which the respondent is asked to evaluate according to any kind of subjective or objective criteria; generally measuring the level of agreement or disagreement. In the context of the safety audit, this would mean a high degree of variability. For example, if the question is ‘Is the place crowded?’, a Likert item will typically have options ranging from ‘Strongly agree’ to ‘Strongly disagree’. For more information, see www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/scallik.php (last checked by the authors 2 January 2015).

6 For more information on the launch of SafetiPin in Indonesia, see http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2014/06/06/057582880/Jakarta-Government-to-Launch-SafetiPin-App-in-August (last checked by the authors 26 February 2015). One of the founders briefly presented SafetiPin to the Governor of Jakarta who evinced interest in using it. UN Women Jakarta has been a partner and has translated the app into Bahasa language. In Bogota, the Municipal Secretary of Women got interested in the app and they partnered to get it translated into Spanish. For more information, see www.thedatadriver.com/2014/04/safetipin-reaches-latin-america.html (last checked by the authors 30 December 2014).

7 To do this, we examined the correlation between the eight parameters and the ‘Feeling’ variable. We used a fixed-effects regression model. Fixed-effects analysis is a statistical method which helps control for any unobserved individual heterogeneity among users which may be linked to their perceptions of safety. Using data from various observations made by the same user, fixed-effects analysis helps account for time-invariant individual characteristics.

8 These include cities as diverse as Delhi, Mumbai, São Paolo, Dubai, Mexico, and Tokyo.

9 Since the NGOs work with either women or adolescents as vulnerable groups, the Safety Centres also primarily focus on them.