Crime has increased across Bangladesh following the fall of the Sheikh Hasina regime amid mass uprising on August 5; many communities therefore are forced to be at the forefront of safeguarding their neighborhoods in the absence of law enforcers.
In response to the situation, Fahim Murshed, a tech entrepreneur, and Marwa Kazi Mohammad, working at a mobile phone service provider, have launched a community-based platform 鈥樷��, designed to mobilize citizen volunteers rapidly and efficiently to fight against crime.
Fahim Murshed, co-creator of Protirodh.net, said that the motivation behind creating the platform was realizing the gap between the new generation of volunteers and the general public who needed help.
鈥榃e have created the platform in view of the current reality. In the beginning, we saw a lot of local initiatives to fight against criminal activities but there was no coordination,鈥� he said.
He said that the platform provided real-time incident reporting and monitoring to enhance community safety.
鈥楾he ultimate purpose was to ease the communication between volunteers and the general public who need help, and to map out all the incidents around Bangladesh to quickly identify affected neighbourhoods,鈥� said Fahim, who graduated from Organisation Strategy and Leadership department of Dhaka University and currently working as a tech lead for a technology company called Co-Design.
Protirodh.net, a real-time community protection platform, was launched on August 8.
Entering the website, we come to know about the number of complaints about robberies received in the last 30 minutes.
If you click on the 'live monitor the current situation' tab on the website and select your location information, you can see the information on the Google map on the website whether the robbers have attacked any place in the area or not. As a result, people in the area can easily come together to prevent robberies and such.
Apart from monitoring the current situation instantly, the website also shows the number of complaints or reports received in the last 24 hours.
Fahim told 抖阴精品 on Tuesday that at least 38, 000 reports have been submitted on the platform so far.
On August 8 and 9, the website was viewed more than three and a half million times, he said.
In order to understand the magnitude of different incidents, they are divided into two categories called Alerts and Incidents, Fahim said, adding that alert events are marked in orange, and events or situations that are serious and bad are marked in red.
Pictures and videos can be added to this site with the complaints, he said, adding that this would be useful for both volunteers and local security forces to prevent ongoing or potential threats.
Another co-creator of the platform, Marwa Kazi Mohammad said that the platform was developed within a short time responding to the urgency of the situation in Bangladesh and the need for immediate action.
The team was currently working on adding new features, aiming to enhance the platform's capabilities further, she said.
鈥楳any crimes are happening regularly in our society. Through this website, we have a plan to solve various social crimes including violence against women, snatching and theft by coordinating the community and youth,鈥� Marwa said.
Fahim and Marwa said that they were figuring out how to run the platform as a community service solution for a longer period of time.
