With crimes against women increasing substantially in many Indian cities, the government agencies are now under pressure to come up with concrete measures in quick time to make our cities safe and secure for women.
By Huma Siddqui
A number of private technology initiatives have come up with various smartphone-based mobile apps over the last two years, which try and aid women in distress in a manner that their near and dear ones are informed on their phones once a woman or a girl presses the alarm button on her mobile phone and it is expected that the family members can then inform the police and ask for help.
While such apps are essentially required but they have not led to a reduction in the response time when a victim is in a distress situation. Sensing this critical gap team, Rolta has worked on and developed interfaces in the police authorities’ Dial 100, called Rolta CADS solution. So now what happens is that whenever a woman victim using a mobile safety app presses the distress alarm button, the call/message will also automatically land up on the desk of the Police Dial 100 call taker, besides the message alert going to her near and dear ones. This
feature has the potential to significantly reduce the police response time while responding to such distress times.
Rolta claims to be probably the only Indian company to have developed its own patented and highly advanced Dial 100 solutions, comparable with the 911 solution being used in the USA. The Mumbai-based firm has already deployed these solutions for Mumbai, Chandigarh, Srinagar, Jammu, Lucknow and Aurangabad authorities.
Rolta Suraksha is an advanced personal casino online safety solution for use by women, senior citizens and any person in distress, needing assistance. The solution is designed to operate in a covert manner with minimal or unnoticeable effort. CR Bannur, senior divisional director, Rolta India, explained to FE that the app can be downloaded from the website and is compatible with available smartphones in the market. “The seamless integration of Rolta Suraksha with the Rolta Geo CAD—an advanced computer aided dispatch (CAD) solution for public safety ensures receipt of the SOS alert at the Police Control Room as well to the guardians. The responding police field units can be pressed in to action to render assistance instantaneously. This app ensures the personal safety on the move and assures assistance,” he said.
“This Rolta IP has been fully developed by us. And currently we support various flavours of Android operating system. Android is the most popular operating system used in most phones and has a large population of users and is cost effective. Also, we are in discussions with various police departments across the country and have showcased it in a number of places,” Bannur said.
Though the company is in preliminary discussions with ministry of home affairs, Lucknow police authorities have started using it and the next installation is going to be in Mumbai. Typically, it works in a simple manner. A tap on alert button raises the SOS: The location, audio, video/image, cellular network and battery status information is transmitted to the Police Control Room. Simultaneously, the guardians also receive an alert in the form of SMS as well as email with distress alert and link to webpage for tracking.
The application continuously gives the location with time stamp for plotting the track. All responding units can be informed through auto broadcast about the SOS to be on look out during hot pursuit. It combines GPS technology for location tracking and smartphone device in terms of camera, microphone to provide the enhanced awareness not only to the law enforcement agencies but also to near and dear ones. And it is easy to use with one touch SOS alert notification by women, senior citizens and any person in distress. Multi-lingual capability ensures greater public reach by supporting regional language support.
