Safe-Up UCT smartphone app

The aim of the Safe-Up UCT smartphone app is to empower students and staff to play a more active role in making UCT a safer place.

The university has invested significant resources to make campuses safer: patrols by Campus Protection Services personnel, secure access control to university buildings, emergency buttons on the ‘blue routes’ and CCTV cameras monitoring at all times.

However, there is currently no easy and coordinated manner in which students and staff can provide information, feedback and ideas to the university about how to improve safety on and around the various campuses.

Safe-Up UCT is not a crime-reporting tool, nor is it a panic button. It is an app that complements existing crime and emergency reporting systems at UCT.

It provides a quick and easy way to share information on what makes you feel safe or unsafe at UCT and surrounding areas. This information will be used to identify key safety and crime problems, and to drive an open and participatory process to find solutions and prevent crime.

Safe-Up UCT will allow students and staff to quickly and easily submit reports about concerns like safety issues in residences, problems with street lighting, or overgrown areas that make you feel unsafe.

The reports via Safe-Up UCT will assist the Safety and Violence Initiative (SaVI) to determine where the key safety shortcomings are, and these findings will be presented to the relevant university authorities for their attention. The data and analysis from these reports will also be made public.

The intention of the app is for SaVI to facilitate solutions to the more pressing safety concerns that are brought to their attention by the UCT community, as well as to organise regular campus safety forums to discuss the information and trends with a view to finding practical and creative solutions to safety problems.

The Safe-Up UCT app is available for free download from the Google Play or iTunes app stores.

The official launch of the app will take place on 11 April 2017 in lecture theatre 2D, Leslie Social Science, upper campus from 13:00 to 14:00.

Please RSVP or contact Guy Lamb for more information.