RideSafe

Inspiration

Edmonton Transit has become increasingly unsafe in recent years, with rising incidents of violence, vandalism, and harassment. As a result, many residents have stopped using public transit, opting for alternative transportation due to safety concerns. We wanted to restore confidence in transit safety by leveraging AI-driven technology to proactively detect threats and provide real-time reporting for both ETS authorities and riders.

What it does

Public transit should be safe for everyone. RideSafe is an AI-driven security app that analyzes real-time surveillance footage to detect threats, violence, and suspicious activity—automatically alerting transit security before incidents escalate.

But that’s not all. Riders can also report safety concerns in real-time, ensuring a faster response from authorities.

With RideSafe, we’re making public transit safer, smarter, and more secure—one ride at a time.

How we built it

We developed RideSafe using: Computer Vision & AI to analyze real-time surveillance footage and detect threats. This is primarily done with ViT Base Violence Detection Model that is a pre-trained model that we further trained with our own dataset. React Native for cross-platform mobile functionality. Python and Flask was used for the backend.

Challenges we ran into

AI Accuracy: Training our model to distinguish real threats from false alarms. Privacy Concerns: Security issues relating to the public CTV footage and it remaining within the City of Edmonton.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Real-time Threat Detection: We implemented an AI system that analyzes security footage in real-time, detecting threats and violence, significantly improving transit security.
User Reporting Integration: Riders can report safety concerns instantly, ensuring faster response times and direct communication with authorities.

What we learned

The real impact of transit safety issues on Edmonton residents. Training AI models with security systems was challenging but very informative.

What's next for RideSafe

Looking ahead, RideSafe plans to integrate with Edmonton Transit Service (ETS) to gather data on real-time passenger counts. By analyzing how many people are on each bus or train, ETS will be able to use this data to:

Optimize routes based on demand, ensuring buses and trains are more frequent during peak times.
Adjust schedules to reduce overcrowding, improving the overall rider experience.
Improve resource allocation, directing transit services to areas with higher ridership and ensuring safer, more efficient transportation for all.
By combining real-time security data with passenger analytics, we aim to create a smarter transit system that continuously improves the safety and efficiency of Edmonton's public transit network. 🚇🚀