Vidcie Empowers Riders to Become Part of their Own Safety Solution

Uniting riders and security teams in the quest for enhanced transit safety, Vidcie InSight brings the power of social media to transit security.

Providing visibility into events as they occur, Vidcie InSight transforms the ubiquitous smartphone into a multimedia incident reporting device capable of streaming live video — and now text messages — directly to a Web-based command-and-control application known as Vidcie Central. The power of Vidcie InSight lies in the fact that smartphones are already in the pockets of both riders and security team members.

With Vidcie InSight, safety and security team members utilize the Vidcie Security App, which transmits real-time GPS location data as well as live video streams or text messages. This allows their teammates in the operations center to monitor their location at all times and receive text and video information in addition to the verbal reporting they are already getting via radio or phone. For riders, the experience is a bit different — and optimized for the daily commuter.

Historically, riders have displayed little interest in downloading a standalone “security app,” as it suggests that their trip to the office, the store or the big game is inherently unsafe. In addition, people don’t often seek out a mobile app they hope they’ll never use. This is counter to how they typically interact with their mobile devices and is a key reason for the lack of adoption.

In the Vidcie model, transit authorities integrate real-time Vidcie reporting capabilities into their existing rider service apps. In this way, the riders who already use this app to check routes, confirm schedules and purchase tickets are also able to participate in the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign, without having to download and learn a secondary app. Enhanced rider safety and security are simply additional services offered by the transit organization. And with Vidcie’s focus on user experience, it was necessary that these additions utilized communication modes that the general public are most comfortable with.

“As transit organizations expand their use of Vidcie InSight to include riders, texting will be the clear winner in multimodal reporting,” said Romulus Pereira, CEO of Vidcie. “While security teams will continue to rely heavily on real-time video, the public at large prefers text as their primary communication method, and the success of any reporting tool comes down to the ease of use for the person making the report.”   

While encouraging rider participation and report submissions is critical to the solution’s success, Vidcie InSight also provides transit security teams with a very powerful way to view and interact with incoming information. Known as Vidcie Central, this Web-based interface provides a multidimensional view of the incoming data.

Taking a “when, where and what” approach, Vidcie Central is divided into three primary areas: the timeline, the map and the feed. The timeline enables operators to define the duration of the live monitoring window that they’d like to see, the map gives a visual overview of where activity is occurring during this time window, and the feed provides a chronological list of all incoming text and video information — along with comprehensive filtering capabilities. The result is an interface that enables operators to view activity trends and hot spots at a glance, while also being able to dig deeper into individual data points.

To See Vidcie InSight in action, visit www.vidcie.com.