For a few years I’ve been thinking in ways tech could help neighbourhoods into becoming more safe taking advantage of the people collaboration. It first came to me after realizing a neighbour a loved in my home town had some communication problems with the essential services. The whole idea of mine is logistically difficult to perform as so I ended up just theorising for a long time without actually writing a single line of code for that idea. Recently, after a discussion in Mastodon, I realized there are some tiny goals to make public spaces safer and that we could start from there.
I’ve been curious about Open Street Map for a while, so I decided I could work in my spare time between projects in a simple python code that created a OSM with marks. The whole idea was to create a launching portal (static, at first) with a map-launching button, and the map contains marks with dangers around the neighbourhood. The warnings could be from to broke asphalt to unsafe LBGTIQ spaces. Or! in a more positive sight, safe spaces! (safe LBGTIQ shops and meeting points, feminist friendly spaces, etc) as well as identifying trigger spaces such as betting places/alcohol stores. It kind of depends on the needs of each neighbourhood. It only needs a JSON (there’s an example already) where you have to set location and the advise.
The idea is for the people to be able to upload information through email or hashtags, some people already suggested to add a form and some of them are planning on merge request that option. I’m so happy about how many people from my city wanted to help as soon as I launched the repo and I decided to share it here in case you guys want to use it in your neighbourhoods as well, or in any case modify the repo.
Have fun and stay safe! I believe in the collaboration of the people for creating safer cities.
Right now it’s in Spanish, as I thought it would help local groups to better understand it, but I hope to soon add the English translation.
Also written in: https://dev.to/terceranexus6/social-engineering-the-performance-security-5g8l