WISE: Creating safer cities, together

The world suffers with an extremely high number of violent crimes. In Brazil, if we consider just the murder cases, the annual average count is between 50,000 and 60,000 murders. Considering the global count of murders, the average is around 437,000.

WISE proposes an integration between citizens, businesses, authorities, and crime-prevention A.I. based technologies such as video and audio analytics. With WISE, citizens, businesses, and authorities will be able to interact, share alerts, ask for help, visualize shared cameras, and other interactions that could be beneficial for public security. Inside the platform, WISE will run video and audio analysis searching for violence patterns, and if any are detected the authorities will be contacted immediately.

Scaling globally, WISE can give to people better ways to help their cities, respecting their individual characteristics and challenges, creating a sense of collaboration and a greater sensation of safety. 

Currently, many obstacles make the police-businesses-citizens communication difficult.

In communities where WISE is active, for example, police receive approximately 6,000 calls/day, of which nearly 40% are pranks. When citizens want to cooperate, they have few calling number options, which are frequently in use, making many people give up. Citizens also back down on cooperating with authorities for fear of retaliation in cases of identity leak.

When the citizen’s support is needed, police must try to communicate the situation by going on television in the few spaces they receive, usually at local news programs.

All that affects resource allocation, police officer self-esteem, and work effectiveness. Unfortunately, police stations all over Brazil suffer from these problems, affecting over 200 million Brazilians every day.

According to Brazilian statistics, in the last two years Brazil averaged nearly 55,000 murders per year. The low rate of homicide case resolutions is also alarming: police solve only 5% - 8% of the cases. There is not a precise number for robbery and rape, but they are also big concerns for many Brazilians, especially women. WISE wants to solve the absence of productive communication between citizens, businesses, and authorities, reducing crime rates and increasing resolution rates.

Most of Brazilian citizens suffer with high crime rates. Worrying about robbery, rape, and even murder can be part of their daily routine, while going to work or dropping kids at school. This is a problem not only in Brazil, but worldwide. WISE’s goal is to help improve security so all world citizens can feel safer while doing their daily activities. Dealing with a problem that affects all society allow us to interact with all kinds of public.

Surveys and beta testing were completed to collect feedback for WISE’s pilot project.

A WISE pilot is currently active and constantly collecting the impressions and feedbacks of our users and supporters.

The Personal BodyGuard mode engages a network of shared external cameras, which are available for the users, making it possible to them to ask for help and collaborate with the police and other users.

WISE provides a platform with the goal to establish digital security communities. These communities are created and strengthened by the connections between citizens, businesses, authorities, and AI based crime-prevention technologies. The first step is to create a massive Collaborative Digital Monitoring Network. Citizens and shop owners are invited to share their private outdoor cameras with the WISE cloud, which will be used to protect themselves and their surrounding area. In addition, citizens receive access to WISE’s App, where they could view, share and post danger alerts in real time. Every alert have a resolution status, which is police can updated in WISE with their feedback.

The second step is to make the Monitoring Network smart. First, WISE will map the main attention points in the city and select the best options of video and audio analytics technology for each context, providing intelligence to this Network and making it proactive in its analysis. This strategy reduces project implementation costs and has the potential to dramatically increase police resources allocation.

The third step is the establishment of WISE’s operation centers, which will provide the necessary support for the citizens and police forces that are using WISE in their cities, through human attention and care.

Currently, police, businesses, and citizen communication is non-effective, and WISE wants to provide a solution for this problem. With WISE, police can give security alerts, ask for citizens’ help and together, police and citizens can improve security and create better cities.

In addition, the use of video and audio analytics integrated with the shared monitoring network could drastically reduce the infrastructure costs that cities would need to build their own monitoring network, receiving camera images faster and with intelligence running every second of every day.

WISE is a confluence of different solutions that supports a real community sense, such as:

• Digital Personal Bodyguard: using sensors of the smartphone to quickly detect someone in trouble with manual SOS, gunshot sounds or fight detection;
• Share Alerts with WISE: using our App to share alerts and receive updates on it;
• WISE Connected City: provides quick access to city cameras and sensors; 
• WISE Analytics: video and audio analytics will act on the camera images shared within WISE, being able to detect problems as they occur; and  
• WISE Command Centre: platform that manages eventual problems shared in WISE.

Our core Technology is software based. It is the platform that connects People and Technology. This platform uses Cloud Applications for storage and processing the video and audio analytics, and Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning in the analytics that are used in complex scenarios like Violence detection, Gun Detection, and Facial Recognition. 

WISE’s solution will improve the cooperation between authorities and citizens by establishing a faster and clearer communication line. Beyond that, WISE provides to authorities, higher quality information, since presently the information that police have access to is usually outdated and can frequently be fake.

Furthermore, WISE is currently working to have a social project, acting directly at the society level to reduce the crime rates at the source. WISE knows that crime rates are usually higher in low-income communities, where many children and teenagers live under vulnerable situations and can frequently become involved in crime. WISE wants to work within these communities, helping these kids by providing support, protection, and social structure; the impact would be increasing their chances of living a life away from crime. 

Currently we are testing our hypothesis, and though there are no people receiving direct impact of WISE as yet, we will begin operating in Recife, a 1,5 million inhabitant city located in the Northeast part of Brazil. In one year, we expect to Impact at least ¼ of Recife’s population (400,000 people) and in five years we expect to be present in most developing countries worldwide, generating impact to more than 1 billion people.

In the next year, WISE’s goal is to be fully integrated with the public safety plan of most cities in Brazil. That goal represents a new era on Brazilian Public Safety, when digital solutions will be formally used to connect citizens, authorities, and will also integrate with Crime Prevention Technologies.

86% of the world’s most dangerous cities are in Latin America. Therefore, it is a WISE goal to have the platform deployed and running in all major cities of Latin America within the next three years. In five years, we expect to be impacting more than 1 billion people in most developing countries.

WISE wants to reduce the number of violent crimes in the world, making an enormous impact in violence worldwide.

There are five main barriers to WISE development: Financial, Technical, Legal, Cultural, and Market related.

Financially, WISE needs a basic physical infrastructure in the cities where it will deploy (such as cameras, microphones, high-speed internet), which is not always available, including many Brazilian cities. WISE will also have to expand its developer team and monitoring center, to be able to provide faster service.

The technical barriers are the need of detection technologies, which needs to be adapted increasingly to people’s daily activities via cars, smartphones, and other devices. WISE also relies on the increase of audio and video analytics.

Legally, the main barrier is the user’s privacy. In Brazil, the image of a citizen can be used only to improve public security, which means images can only be shared with public forces.

Cultural barriers can also be a problem in WISE’s execution since people are used to relying on the government to solve crime related problems. In addition, people could be afraid of reporting crimes due to the potential of a criminals’ revenge if they help the police. Some people can also be bothered by the increase of cameras in the streets and having their image available to hundreds of people.

Marketwise, presently there are few advanced security solutions, especially in the technology used for crime prevention in public safety.

Financial

Avantia (Founder of WISE) has funds to invest in WISE’s initial deployment, new technologies development, and user growth. Furthermore, Avantia has a deep network of investment contacts, in Brazil and in the world.

Technical

Avantia’s contact network has many technology providers, which can associate with WISE, varying according to the need of each city. Beyond that, Avantia has broad experience in developing crime-prevention technologies and is constantly updating its solution portfolio. With respect to Brazil, currently the country is receiving pilot tests on 5G network through the TIM company, which is planning to have its commercial release in Brazil by 2021.

Legal

Avantia has a strong relationship and experience with the public sector, especially the departments responsible for public security, considering Avantia provides the monitoring systems to them. That experience is helpful for improving strategies.

In addition, WISE’s platform is adaptable to each city’s needs, providing security accordingly to laws and norms of each implementation city.

Cultural

Brazilian population is highly connected to the internet, and digital influencers have a profound impact on several people, as is very common worldwide. Using the right influencers, WISE can gain credibility and have an easier market entry. WISE is constantly searching for formats where the user’s privacy can be guaranteed, allowing citizens to collaborate with the police without sharing their real identity. 

Full-time Staff of WISE Applications (A.I. team is separate):

- 3 mobile developers

- 2 UX|Designers

- 1 Fullstack Web Developer

- 1 Site Reliability Engineer

We are also looking for a Software House to develop a few parts of the MVP, to gain speed.

Currently our team includes two Endeavor entrepreneurs, Silvio Aragão (who is also a Singularity University entrepreneur) and Eduardo Ferreira Lima. Fernando Sodré and Silvio Meira, partners at Ikewai, are also part of our team. Silvio Meira is one of the most recognized names in Brazil technology environment, leading the creation of the States’ Technology Park.

Avantia (Aragão and Lima’s engineer and Technology Company) is WISE’s founder, and has 21 years of experience, which can be extremely useful to WISE. WISE’s platform is being built by Avantia’s development team, which has a vast knowledge on crime-prevention technology. WISE can also use Avantia’s extensive network of investors and the strong relationship with government organizations to shape a partnership with the police force, receiving constant feedback.

There is no other company in Brazil with the combination of capacity to obtain financial resources, a team with experienced entrepreneurs, a strong government relationship, and over 20 years of expertise in security technology.

For example, Avantia provides the monitoring system of all the Pernambuco State and within Brazil’s government, including the Presidency. Avantia also developed projects to big multinational companies located in Brazil, such as McDonalds.

Michigan Ross School of Business – University of Michigan: WISE project was developed by Avantia together with a team from Michigan Ross School of Business – University of Michigan. Avantia was selected to participate in the Multidisciplinary Action Project Program in 2018.

Singularity University: Avantia submitted to Singularity University the project developed with Michigan Ross School of Business. Avantia was selected to be part of the Global Startup Program 2019. The goal is to develop a go-to-market strategy together with Singularity University.

The project was developed with the Michigan Ross team and the go-to-market strategy is being developed with Singularity University.

WISE will work as a platform that can be deployed in different cities, states, and Countries. WISE’s clients are citizens, business owners, security companies, and government.

Citizens will use WISE’s personal BodyGuard, which will monitor them through the app on smartphone or smart watch, notifying their family and/or police in emergency cases.

Business owners will use the video monitoring at the cloud, and the use of audio and video analytics to proactively detect possible crimes and help with prevention.

Security companies will find in WISE’s network a great platform to advertise their services. Currently WISE is evaluating possibilities of commercialization models that improve the experience of WISE’s network and such companies.

Government will achieve, through WISE, better information gathering (making outdated information and pranks less common). WISE will also provide to the public forces a communication channel, where the population will be in direct contact and could collaborate in civil defense services. 

Avantia is investing from its own funds USD 1,5 Million Dollars in the MVP, the initial platform, and the initial phase of the project.

After 1.5 years, Avantia will need additional VC funds as a Series A investment to execute the go-to-market strategy.

Revenues will come from the commercialization of its services to its key clients.

Citizens will receive a freemium service. They can enjoy basic applications from the app, report crimes and use the functionalities of the personal BodyGuard. On the premium service, WISE will provide a unique package, sold by user, with a monthly billing model.   

Business owners will be able to participate in an online smart monitoring service, with storage included. They will be able to select different packages, varying the analytics they want (audio, video, with or without Artificial Intelligence) and the storage time.

Security companies will be charged to directly interact through the platform. There will be two fee options, using time charges (semester or year), and charges upon transactions at the platform. Payments done on the platform can also be a profitability opportunity, especially if WISE enters on digital wallet model.   

Initially, government will have a similar approach to business owners, using the smart monitoring e-cloud storage. 

We believe that WISE’s contact with SOLVE can help achieve a better comprehension on how to effectively live WISE’s purpose on creating safer cities and effectively reducing the violence rates worldwide.

SOLVE community has experience with human being focused business and with applied cutting-edge technology. Such contact is rare and very valuable to WISE, especially at a point where WISE is establishing and breaking premises very fast.

With SOLVE’s community support we expect to meet and share with people from worldwide experiences and support to build, with WISE, a better world to live in.  

Organizations with experience in:

Public-private collaboration strategies;

High scalable digital products;

Labs focused in AI development;

Innovation Programs focused on Collaborative Solutions;

Venture Capital Firms.

WISE uses AI Video and Audio Analytics to improve crime detection. The AI implemented at WISE makes it possible to anticipate actions, which help us improve citizen safeness. 

The AI prize would be very important to continue developing our AI Video and Audio Analytics technology. Our goal is to make our technology more accessible and accurate, so citizens can feel safer having this tool on their homes, smartphones or even watches and cars.

WISE’s main goal is to gather with the community to share experiences and build valuable connections to WISE’s future, considering our global scale goals. The prize itself would be utilized on the construction of the initial version of WISE’s social project. Another priority with the prize usage would be the investments to enhance the size, engagement, and experience of the citizens and authorities. 

WISE’s App is powered with Audio Alerta.

Audio Alerta is a solution that uses the Smartphone from users to detect sounds which indicates dangerous situations, such as gunshots, car crashes and fights.

This technology, allied with our users, can highly leverage city safety by having hundreds of thousands of sensors around the city. When associated with the police force, this solution could have a huge impact. The police could have a real time data of gunshots around the whole city as they occur, which could make it almost impossible to not quickly detect the sound of a gunshot.