Virtual Booth

Community safety remains a growing concern as many neighbourhoods still lack a centralised, transparent, and user-friendly channel through which residents can report crime and receive timely safety updates. To close this gap, this project developed TrustGuard, a mobile application that allows community members to report incidents using GPS location data and multimedia evidence while visualising crime hotspots through an interactive dashboard. Its novelty lies in unifying three functions rarely found together in existing platforms: simplified location-based reporting, transparent real-time case status tracking, and public-facing crime data visualisation within a single mobile system. The application was built using an Agile Software Development Life Cycle to ensure flexibility and user-centred design, with requirements informed by a questionnaire of 110 respondents, a review of existing crime-reporting systems, and background academic literature. Findings indicated that users place strong value on multimedia evidence support and real-time case tracking as drivers of trust in the reporting process. Beyond its technical contribution, TrustGuard has clear potential for adoption by residents' associations, local councils, and law enforcement agencies seeking an accessible community safety tool, with future versions extending to cross-platform deployment and automated crime-pattern analytics as possible revenue and partnership avenues. Ultimately, the project demonstrates how mobile and location-based technology can strengthen public trust, encourage active participation in crime prevention, and support safer, more informed communities, directly contributing to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 on sustainable cities and communities and SDG 4 on quality education through improved digital literacy. Future development will focus on cross-platform expansion, machine-learning-based hotspot clustering, and proactive proximity alerts.