Design and Implementation of a Request and Response Process on Help-Requesting Mobile Application

With the growing concern over frequent occurrences of criminal events, help-requesting mobile applications have drawn attention. However, existing applications solely focus on providing help-requesting services. Therefore, in this paper, we design and implement a help request and response process which allows users to request help by sending messages and locating their friends, acquaintances and even near-by application users, and to allow help be reached by forwarding messages. This application is composed of three parts: help-requesting, help-responding, and checking-status. This application is developed on the Android platform where we exchange users' longitude and latitude through web server communication. We conducted test to verify the effectiveness of the forwarding function, and it has been confirmed that 93.33% of subjects used the forwarding function to help users at risk.