Fairfield University students along with the school’s entrepreneur in residence, Chris Hamer, are developing a community-based app called CommunAlert that allows smartphone users to report suspicious activity.
“Sadly people see things that seem out of place, but they’re not really not 911 calls,” Hamer recently said at a event at the university’s start-up accelerator. He said the app is meant to address the bag left behind or a person acting suspiciously, not "the ticking box."
The location-based app would be similar to Wayze, a GPS app that contains real-time traffic information shared by the app’s users. Despite privacy concerns, the service has tens of millions of users have signed on to the service.
Hamer said his app is a way to make it easier for people to report incidents that don’t necessarily warrant an emergency call. He said the app is not meant to replace 911.
“CommunAlert is not an idea to replace a 911 call,” Hamer said. “CommunAlert is essentially for everything else that you think is suspicious.”
The developers also will give users the ability to confirm incidents. If a user reports a suspicious package, others can say they see the same thing or that someone picked up the bag.
Authorities could use this information to decide whether an incident requires attention.
The students plan to offer the app for free to nonprofits and municipalities. But they also plan to reach out to large venues to provide custom security solutions.
A sporting arena, for example, may be interested in having a security app developed for their property, they said.
Organizations that purchase the customized app could put special offers inside of the app. Foursquare, another location-based app, offers a similar feature.
Hamer said the app is currently in the early alpha stage and not yet ready for a widespread distribution. But he said he hopes to have a beta test with a few hundred users by the end of the semester.
And the final product? “In the summer, we should have a live product ready to roll out,” he said.
For more information, visit the app’s website here.
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