Herd Routes: A Preventative IoT-Based System for Improving Female Pedestrian Safety on City Streets

TL;DR

Herd Routes is a preventative IoT-based system that incentivizes safer, busier pedestrian routes for women in cities, utilizing distributed ledgers and simulation testing to enhance urban female safety.

Contribution

The paper introduces Herd Routes, a novel preventative system using distributed ledgers and route incentivization to improve female pedestrian safety in urban environments.

Findings

Proof-of-concept developed with SUMO simulation and Android app.

Initial testing shows technical feasibility and desirability.

System encourages safer, busier pedestrian routes for women.

Abstract

Over two thirds of women of all ages in the UK have experienced some form of sexual harassment in a public space. Recent tragic incidents involving female pedestrians have highlighted some of the personal safety issues that women still face in cities today. There exist many popular location-based safety applications as a result of this; however, these applications tend to take a reactive approach where action is taken only after an incident has occurred. This paper proposes a preventative approach to the problem by creating safer public environments through societal incentivisation. The proposed system, called "Herd Routes", improves the safety of female pedestrians by generating busier pedestrian routes as a result of route incentivisation. A novel application of distributed ledgers is proposed to provide security and trust, a record of system users' locations and IDs, and a platform for token exchange. A proof-of-concept was developed using the simulation package SUMO (Simulation of Urban Mobility), and a smartphone app. was built in Android Studio so that pedestrian Hardware-in-the-Loop testing could be carried out to validate the technical feasibility and desirability of the system. With positive results from the initial testing of the proof-of-concept, further development could significantly contribute towards creating safer pedestrian routes through cities, and tackle the societal change that is required to improve female pedestrian safety in the long term.