City now testing app to learn where people don’t feel safe in Edmonton

Testing has begun on a new app where you can document on your smartphone any place outside in Edmonton where you feel threatened, anxious or simply not safe.

It’s a project that was launched by the City of Edmonton after the UN Women’s Safe Cities and Public Spaces for Women and Girls International Conference.

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“You’ll put a pin in the map,” said Jackie Foord, the city’s branch manager of social development, who has been overseeing the pilot project.

“It’ll show what street you were on and then there will be some drop-down menus that will ask for your gender, what time of day it was and what was it that you felt, or saw in some cases, or experienced.”

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“It might be in a residential area, so the city might have an opportunity to go in there and say: is the lighting not right? Because one of the drop-down menus will say: ‘bad lighting.’

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“Or it could be a business or a commercial street that says, ‘Hey, there’s been some actual sexual assaults taken place on this street, or groping or catcalling,’ and then we can look at those streets along with the business community and say: ‘What is happening on this street that we need to address?'”

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Eventually, the map generated will have a series of pin marks and if certain locations have a large blob of those markings, something will be done about it.

“We know from our scope and study for the UN, that public transportation is one area,” Councillor Bev Esslinger said in an interview. She took the lead last November to get the project going.

“We know it’s not the only area of concern for people as they’re walking or if they feel unsafe or if they’re attending events — what are they?

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“That might prompt additional work on us, so we’ll have the data to say we need to dig deeper and find out what’s going on here and maybe target investment to improve it.”

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“I have looked at some of the prototypes and had recommended a few changes,” Esslinger said. “We’re tweaking it to make it Edmonton-information because I wanted a little bit more information available. I wanted to identify the infrastructure improvements that might be needed.”

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“For example, maybe it’s lighting. Maybe it’s a location, a bar or a rave, where people feel very unsafe. Whatever those reasons are we’ll be able to look at them and then be proactively making changes as we can in those areas.”

Once testing is complete, the city will unveil the app in a report on July 4 ahead of city council’s Community Services Committee meeting on July 10.