The LiveSafe app, invented by Kristina Anderson has the capabilities of connecting campus police with a student body, which were once unheard of. Anderson is herself a victim of violence on college campuses. In April 2007, she was shot three times in the Virginia Tech massacre.
The app is a two-way connector between public safety officials and students. Making a call in a moment of dire need is often difficult and time consuming. With the LiveSafe app a student can send a notification to campus police in the same manner they would send a text message. Similarly, campus police can have a more direct line to students to share information in a way that emails and group texts may not have.
On the day she was wounded in 2007, over two hours had passed between the first gunshots on campus and the gunman entering her classroom. Anderson believes that an app like LiveSafe would have been able to inform students of impending danger. The app will also give students access to latest crime reports, and have the capability of sharing information between users; not just campus police.
The app has many features to optimize communication between the two parties. If a student does not know the phone number to their campus police, the app will have it pre-loaded into its system. The LiveSafe website hails the app as a way to "discreetly and intuitively send GPS-tagged audio, video, picture, and text information straight to the nearest authorities."
The app is currently in beta testing at two University campuses. At Winthrop University in North Carolina, the app has been downloaded 6,500 times. Considering that Winthrop has an enrollment of around 6,000 students, it is clear that the application can become popular in communities as well.
