According to a survey of 35.000 Spanish women conducted by Wave in 2019, 83% are afraid of walking alone at night. Tiina Rinne, Marketing Manager at Wave, states she is included in that percentage. Wave is a geolocation company, and in early 2019 its team realised that most women had had bad experiences, so they decided to create Sister, a mobile application that Tiina assures gives her plenty of confidence.
The precision of geolocation
“The goal was to create a useful tool to prevent women from being exposed to unpleasant situations. Sister is a travel companion”, assures Pablo Clemente, Technology Director at Wave. The application gives you the possibility of sharing a location with a desired contact during a journey, it suggests routes, provides information on which establishments are open and even has a panic button that can be connected to the police if you want to.
“Our technological contribution is the precision of up to 2 meters in the location, in real time and even in altitude. This means that in a case of extreme urgency, the police can locate the victim very fast”, Pablo adds.
By summer, they already had the pilot, and 4 months later, the free application was already operating. “But our job is not done yet, we continue to integrate new functionalities on a daily basis: now, we can simulate a call to alert the alleged aggressor that we’re not alone”, Tiina explains.
“I’m part of that 83% of women who are afraid of going home alone at night and Sister gives me confidence ”
Technology at the service of startups
“Our server is based on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This allows us to make specific schedules and to pay only for what we use”, says Pablo, and Tiina adds: “This way, we make sure we are able to answer in very specific high demand moments , such as New Year’s Eve”.
Joaquín Garralda, AWS Responsible for startups accounts, explains the importance of initiatives such as Sister: “It’s a strategic client for us, because what they do has a real impact on society and, moreover, they do it using technology. AWS allows small and big companies to stop investing in physical information infrastructure and its maintenance”.
Sister’s team firmly believes that this application, along with their experience in geolocation, can be of service to more collectives: “Now, we’re also working to make this application useful to people suffering with Alzheimer. We always have new challenges”, Pablo assures.