The creators of personal safety app Eyerus are busy with a proof of concept that will see its network of emergency responders include the SA Police Service and community policing forums (CPFs).
So says Eyerus co-founder Sibusiso Mbhele, explaining the next phase in the app’s emergency response services.
Founded by GreenEye Consortium, Eyerus – a play on the word iris – is an automated algorithm mobile app, designed to provide users with personal safety and security services.
Officially launched in February, the app looks to be a gateway to fight contact crime, which includes sexual violence, rape, assault and gender-based violence, as well as provide social protection, especially for women and members of the LGBTIQ+ community.
Its current emergency response network is made up of170 armed response service providers, 1 800 armed response vehicles and 5 400 armed response officers across all nine provinces, with a five- to eight-minute reaction time in urban areas and slightly longer in the outskirts, Mbhele tells ITWeb.
The plan now is to make it possible for the first line of contact, for example CPFs, to be able to respond to incidents put through via the app.
“We understand that in some areas, it’s sometimes difficult for private security companies to attend to cases there; not even the police are able to get there quick enough. You’ll need the first line of contact, which are usually the people on the ground close to the situations.
“We need to have a situation where the CPFs are able to react when a user goes blue, for instance, while the private security is on its way in those difficult to reach areas.
“The idea is that everything becomes interlinked at some point and time in life.”
Mimicking the colours of a traffic light (robot) and an additional colour, Eyerus enables a user to indicate how safe or unsafe they feel in their current surroundings. The safety status modes are green, amber, red and blue.
The green alert mode is when a user feels totally safe, amber is when they feel uneasy and intimidated, the red alert mode means the user is in escalated danger, and blue immediately dispatches private security services to the user’s location.
Mbhele explains that when the amber mode is activated, Eyerus starts live-streaming audio onto a secure cloud in one’s surroundings. “For example, if a lady in a meter taxi feels uneasy about the driver talking funny to her, she can simply shake her phone and then the app will start listening to what’s going on in the car. The same if a spouse or a boyfriend becomes verbally abusive, the female user can use the functionality there. In the event the situation is not de-escalated, she can then move the app onto the next state, which is red.
“On red, the app switches on both the front and back camera. It will then live-stream all the visuals, the audio and at the same time alert the user’s guardian, which are people the user would have pre-loaded on the app to be guardians in the event of trouble.
“At the same time that guardians are alerted about what’s happening, they can also see and hear what’s happening.
“If the situation does not calm down, the user can then activate the blue mode, which activates a call to the private security company. Within 10 seconds of this status mode, the user will receive a phone call from our call centre to verify certain details and if the user is not fine, then they will dispatch security to rescue the user in distress.”
According to Mbhele, the personal safety app is free to download; however, the functionalities are limited. For the full package of services, which will include security dispatch, users will pay a monthly subscription of R59.
In terms of who is eligible to be a guardian, he says this can be anyone that a user trusts. “Up to five people can be guardians. This can be the user’s parents, friends or even a colleague. They [guardians] also need to have downloaded Eyerus to be able to see the videos and receive alerts whenever the user is in trouble.”
Gift to mankind?
Eyerus isn’t the first app in the market with the aim to ensure the security and safety of vulnerable groups. Mbhele acknowledges this, saying: “We certainly didn’t think we are coming up with God’s gift to mankind.
“We just wanted to lay a hand and add towards helping curb the scourge of violent crime in our country.
“When we put together this technology initially, we thought we aren’t doing something that’s out of the ordinary. However, we have managed to get an international patent on the app, to say there’s no other app like it in the world.
“The live-streaming of visuals is so important because we then store all of that with the right metadata; it’s something that can be used in court. We’re hoping to see more convictions of the perpetrators.”
He reveals that since officially going live, the app’s sitting at about 1 700 downloads, adding the usage rate is 45%, so far, which he thinks is “pretty high”.
“Another important thing to note is that we’ve done a penetration test on the app and platform and everything that comes with it, and we use a secure cloud and everything that we store is in accordance with the POPI Act as well.
“We went through a rigorous process. We had to hire a fulltime advocate during the period when we were starting off to make sure we tick all the necessary legal boxes, so that we don’t find ourselves in trouble.”
Mbhele notes Eyerus is not only available to individuals but businesses, insurance companies and higher learning institutions that can provide it as a service to their stakeholders.
“We also sell it to higher learning institutions – what you discover is that students are sometimes not safe. The institutions have sufficient manpower on the ground; however, the security officers are not proactive.
“We sell Eyerus to the institutions to get the security officers on the ground to be proactive and alerted earlier than when situations happen.”
Eyerus is available to download from the App Store and Google Play Store.
It will soon to be available on Huawei AppGallery, Mbhele concludes.
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