Each year over 250, 000 children slip through the net in the European Union. For this sensitive issue, Ubitech has stepped forward with an innovative solution that can help the investigation of missing children as well as unaccompanied refugee minors cases. The successful case of the ChildRescue project was presented in the CORDIS magazine (Harnessing collective intelligence to find missing children | Results In Brief | CORDIS | European Commission (europa.eu), the European Commission’s primary source of results from the EU projects framework, as a strong example that the combination of novel technologies and initiatives with powerful social impact can bring about outstanding results to society.
In the context of the EU funded project ChildRescue, UBITECH proposed a mobile app, compatible with both Android and iOS operating systems, which enables the public to act as social sensors, allowing them to receive information and provide feedback to the responsible organisations, in order for the location of a missing child to be effectively identified. The ChildRescue community mobile app issues real-time alerts near places of interest, such as where a child was last seen. Citizens can respond with information, including photos, exclusively accessible by the organisation involved in the case. The quality, relevance and credibility of this feedback are assessed by an algorithm. Through the app ChildRescue aims at leveraging the collective awareness, resourcefulness and action for a humanitarian cause: to expedite more rapid and effective resolution of missing children cases. The project will also take special care for supporting the identification of unaccompanied refugee minors, which is an emerging issue nowadays.
