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Client Overview

Focusing on creating complete safety in outdoor environments for women, Alarmwear has been designed to offer protection in both a proactive and reactive manner. Consisting of 2 IoT device types, the overall product strategy has been developed to both deter and defend, thereby tackling even the most challenging circumstances.

The handheld device raises an alarm upon activation, while the wearable LED strip lights up. Either one of the devices shall suffice, and both are prominent enough to onlookers (as opposed to otherwise discreet safety/alarm systems). This is the basis for Alarmwear’s deter and defend approach, as it has the potential to keep possible perpetrators away simply by way of visibility.

Requirements

A mobile app was the first requirement for Alarmwear, since this would be the very first touchpoint users and their followers had to the IoT device – especially when an alarm was triggered using BLE connectivity. Integrating location mapping to this mix was the next requirement, since those following the user, including law enforcement, would be able to monitor the user’s location on a real-time basis. Integrating with the webshop was the final layer, in order to verify users who had purchased a subscription from the website.

Solutions

The mobile app is a focal point for Alarmwear, as it has to perform many key functions to ensure the level of safety outlined by its product strategy.

Front-end and back-end development has both been done by EFutures, with IoT devices connecting to both Android and iOS apps via Bluetooth. This allows for low-energy and real-time location sharing with the IoT devices.

Location mapping includes real-time updates into a central database. While the normal state records a user’s location every 60 seconds, the alarm state raises this frequency to once every 15 seconds.

Instant triggers via an AWS-powered SMS gateway ensures followers and law enforcement are informed, to arrange for rescue operations immediately.

Webshop integration allows for user verification upon registering on the app, by matching the unique ID that is generated upon purchase.

Outcomes & Benefits

While Alarmwear achieves its flagship goal of establishing a reliable women’s safety system, the information architecture delivered by EFutures for its mobile app and centralized database is also capable of offering benefits such as:

– In-depth analytics of different outdoor environments, assault types, user and perpetrator profiling, etc.,

– Dynamic integration capabilities with law enforcement and criminal investigation agencies for enhanced intelligence,

– The potential to administer AI and machine learning, as both hardware components are IoT devices that can be made ‘smarter’ via ‘learning’ from existing big data repositories.