Take back the Night

To live in a safe and secure environment is one of the most basic needs of human beings. Independent of the actual situation, the subjective impression of being safe can be compromised by information about previous accidents in the media or social networks, by broken illumination, or simply because one is the only one walking through a dark alley. The impression of insecurity may hamper the personal freedom in a way that people don’t dare to go home alone from a club-night, don’t dare to stay after dark in an empty university environment or in the worst case don’t dare to leave home at all.

In this project, we want to create a prototype of an app that increases the subjective impression of being safe in a dark and apparently too empty environment. The idea is to integrate information from environmental sensors as well as from smart phone sensors (GPS) in a way that a user actively extends his/her safety situation awareness.