The virtual final review of the ChildRescue H2020-780938 project was successfully held by the European Commission on the 31st of March 2021. UBITECH presented the novel secure technological approaches and data anonymisation policies that have been adopted in the context of the project, which led to the implementation of the anonymisation framework. Additionally, UBITECH demonstrated the 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.
Towards this accomplishment, privacy preserving location-based alerts and geofencing techniques are applied and constitute the backbone of UBITECH’s technical activities in the frame of the project. The mobile app has been utilised by the pilot partners of the ChildRescue Consortium and this endeavor resulted in more than 21,000 downloads in both Greece and Belgium. These very impressive results were reflected in the comments of the reviewers and the PO, who shared their excitement with the entire consortium, by providing extremely positive feedback. Last but not least, the project is expected to be presented as a success story in the CORDIS magazine soon. The ChildRescue project definitely proved that when novel technologies are utilised through initiatives with such a powerful social impact, the result can be impeccable.
