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Cape Town - The new instant armed response programme is designed to roll out in large metros after a successful launch in Stellenbosch.
StellieSafe is a pilot programme set to be launched in Stellenbosch and it will work along the lines of popular ride-sharing application Uber.
"This whole idea is protect public spaces; it’s not supposed to protect you in your home. I think the municipality wants to focus on the university campus and the CBD just for the pilot, but they definitely want to put in Kayamandi, Idas Valley, Jamestown", Alan Knott-Craig jnr, the brains behind Project Isizwe told Fin24.
The Stellenbosch pilot is, in part, a reaction to the recent spike in crime that has shocked the university town.
The kidnapping of 21-year-old student Ilze-Dene Oberholzer has prompted calls for the university to scrap evening exams. University municipal officials have called for increased security patrols and the expansion of a CCTV camera network.
Location based technology
Knott-Craig rejected criticism that even if the platform worked in the Stellenbosch pilot, it could not be replicated in a big city like Cape Town or Johannesburg.
"And why can't this work in a metro? The beauty is the technology, you just have to scale it. Technology can scale, and you don't have to hire people", he said.
The platforms works similar to Uber in that the location-based service sends a request to nearby armed response officers who will receive a notification on their smartphones.
In the expansion phase, StellieSafe may ultimately work along similar lines to CCID which operates in Cape Town's CBD. (Duncan Alfreds, Fin24)
Knott-Craig explains: "How Uber works is how we're going to work. When you hit your Uber button, and you say 'I want a ride' everybody within 2km of you, who's not occupied gets a ping on their phone and you have 15 seconds to accept the ride.
"In this case there's no money involved; this is a pilot. There's no money for the security companies, it doesn't cost the municipality anything; it doesn't cost the consumer anything. Everyone is getting together to show how it can work.
"The app knows where you because it's got your GPS co-ordinates, and it knows where the guy is so it can calculate the time with the traffic."
He expects that security officers will show up within six minutes and in the pilot phase, the application will only work on Android and Phones.
Reputations
The success of Uber has demonstrated that the ride-sharing idea can serve demand where the need exists, but some cities have pushed back against Uber over safety concerns for passengers.
Knott-Craig conceded that Ube has had challenges, but said that StellieSafe was different in that all the armed response officers were vetted by reputable companies who had signed up to the platform.
In addition, reputations are at stake because subscribers are able to rate the response of security officers.
"You rate the guy who came. Was he on time? Was he polite? Did he help you? Did he shoot the right person?" Knott-Craig chuckled.
Former Mxit CEO Knott-Craig founded Cellfind's Look4Me a decade ago. The programme allowed subscribers to send an emergency SMS to five contacts for help with a push of a button.
However, despite some traction, accuracy was a problem because Look4Me relied on rough location data on feature phones, unlike the more accurate GPS data in modern smartphones.
Watch this video on how the StellieSafe programme will work.
- Follow Duncan on Twitter
