Corporation app to alert women in unsafe zones

With the Greater Chennai Corporation and the city police mapping zones where crime against females is unusually high, women in the city will soon receive caution alerts in their smartphones, warning them against such areas.

According to a Chennai Corporation source, the civic body has written to the police force seeking details of crime against women, nature of the crime, date of occurrence, spots of occurrences and other details. “We will collate the details and segregate the areas based on the number of crime incidents against women,” the source said.

The State and Central governments have allocated Rs 425 crore to implement the women safety initiatives under safe city project in Chennai. Of the Rs 425 crore, the State would provide 40 per cent of the fund. Explaining further, the source said that the civic body is designing a GIS mapping of the city to help with property assessment and property tax collection apart from other maintenance work. The same GIS technology would be used to map the crime zones too.

“Once the collection of details and crime zones are identified, mapping will be completed and the map will be made public through the application being created under the safe city project. Once the women enter such locations, caution messages would pop-up on the smartphones,” he added.

Meanwhile, the civic body has already identified 617 locations in the city such as Marina Beach, Elliot’s Beach, CMBT, Chennai Central and others as vulnerable spots for women.

The vulnerable spots would have smart poles that would be equipped with CCTV cameras, emergency call box and lights. When the women feel intimidated or harassed, they could press the emergency call button on the smart pole to call for help.