THE SAFETY LABinnovation for women’s safety

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERSmail : nirat@safetylab.in

// THE WOMEN’S SAFETY PROBLEM HAS FOUR VARIANTSMore than 50% of women in India experience harassment, compromised public safety, gender-based-violence (GBV), & trafficking.

PUBLIC SPACE SAFETY

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

WORKPLACE HARASSMENT

A very large proportion of Indian women suffer from varying degrees of violence and harassment in “public spaces” such as streets, parks, bus stops. This everyday problem severely affects the mobility of women outside their houses.

Factors that lead to this are poorly lit streets, poorly planned parks & neighborhood markets, bus stops, a lack of public toilets, and in general how public spaces are designed.

The Nirbhaya instance is a gruesome example of this.

According to the National Family Health Survey, about 39% of Indian women have been victims of some form of spousal violence: sexual, physical, or emotional. Non-spousal violence would increase this number even more.

This violence which affects women across socio-economic and rural-urban divides varies in intensity. For instance, physical violence ranges from women getting slapped by their husbands (34% reported) to attempted burnings (over 2% reported).

According to a survey recent research report, over % 17 of women face harassment at the workplace. A large majority of them do not report the perpetrators.

This issue cuts across economic divides and affects working in plush offices as well as those working as construction workers or domestic help.

TRAFFICKING

Tens of thousands of girls & women are trafficked every year in India and sold into either bonded labour, forced marriages, or prostitution.

These girls & women originate from different parts of India, though Eastern India dominates, and are either duped by “agents” or outrightly kidnapped.

Cumulatively, it is estimated that there are millions of trafficked girls & women in India.

//THE PROBLEM IS GETTING WORSE IN INDIAIn spite of recent attention, especially since 2012, and high-level debate & policy recommendations, the problem is getting worse.

// THE SAFETY LABThe Safety Lab is a platform to incubate a series of innovation initiatives that address women’s safety. These initiatives will include but will not be limited to the following

SAFETY DATA PROJECT DIGNITY GAMES DESIGN FOR WOMEN

THE SAFETY LAB

An open innovation project to get ideas around how a Big Data based information platform could help police departments, government agencies, corporations, & individuals increase women’s safety.

Subsequently, this platform will be built and piloted with additional grants & impact funding.

A program that will collaborate with leading game designers globally to design a series of “serious games” that lead to boys & men treating girls & women with greater dignity and respect. A very essential component in making India safer for women.

This too, will be spun off as a separate social project.

A design-led innovation project that will seek to design women-friendly experiences (such as streets, parks, bus stops), working environments, government services, matrimonial processes), technology services that reduce violence, and other related services.

This will be a collaborative project with leading designers across the world.

Boiled down to its essentials, it will seek ideas on how Big Data can be used to address women's safety. Our hypothesis is that many parts of the women’s safety problem and approaches such as Big Data lend themselves to crowdsourced innovation. The richness and quality of solutions which a well chosen set of participants can come up with, would be very difficult to replicate with a small set of predefined stakeholders.

The project will start in 2015 and ideas that emerge from it will be taken forward in either their original forms or by cherry-picking the best pieces of thinking that the contest unearths and creating effective technology solutions to address the women's safety crisis. 

We will be working closely with organizations in this space as well as the Government to scale solutions that come out from the SDP.

// THE SAFETY DATA PROJECT

A PROJECT TO IDENTIFY HOW BIG DATA CAN ADDRESS THE WOMEN’S SAFETY PROBLEM

// WHAT CAN BIG DATA DO FOR WOMEN’S SAFETY? Used effectively, Big Data methods can enable HUGE improvements in women’s safety.

SAFETY DATAANALYTICS PLATFORM

SOCIAL MEDIA STREAMS

POLICE STATION LISTING

CRIME RECORDS DATA

WEATHER PATTERNS

TRANSPORT ROUTES

THOUSANDS OF DATA SETS INNOVATIVE ANALYTICS MODELING PATHBREAKING POSSIBILITIES

DYNAMIC POLICING PATTERNS

Using insights from the Safety Data platform, Delhi police know how to change policing patterns to prevent incidents of violence against women in the anticipation of a very heavy monsoon shower 4 days away.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ASSESSMENT

Using insights from the Safety Data platform, a family is able to evalute the “dowry-ask-risk” from a certain man’s matrimonial profile.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING PRE-EMPTION

Using insights from the Safety Data platform, an NGO is able to predict the likelihood of a certain village being targeted by child traffickers based on agricultural yields and income of families.

We are looking to build a network of volunteers who will contribute to the different projects incubated within the Safety Lab initiative. Presently, we are looking to get volunteers who are interested in the Safety Data Project & Safety App UX projects.

Volunteering will involve

• Problem Solving Participating in brainstorms & contributing domain knowledge to structure the problem and think of possible solutions

• Evangelism to encourage individuals and organizations to join this initiative• Partnerships to maximize eventual scaleup of this project

Volunteers can get involved with time commitments that vary from 4 hours a month to about 10-15 hours a month.

// SEEKING VOLUNTEERS

WE ARE LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS WITH EXPERTISE IN CONSULTING, ANALYTICS, BIG DATA TECH, HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN, & UX / UI DESIGN.

The Safety Lab will work with a group of organizations who represent a global, multidisciplinary perspective to address India’s most pressing crisis.

CONFIRMED

// THOUGHT PARTNERS

EXPECTED

THE SAFETY LABinnovation for women’s safety

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERSnirat@safetylab.in