ChildRescue

About the project

Through an innovative approach on the missing children investigation cycle, ChildRescue was instrumental in leveraging the collective awareness, resourcefulness and action for a humanitarian cause: to expedite more rapid and effective resolution of missing children cases. The project also took special care for supporting the identification missing unaccompanied refugee minors, which was an emerging issue at the time.
ChildRescue explored patterns of interaction and awareness during the missing children investigations, leveraging the untapped potential of open-social-linked data to augment the background information of missing children through multi-layer (personal, psychological, social and activity) profiling and predictive analytics, respecting and protecting privacy and personal data. ChildRescue provided evidence-based insights for the network effect’s impact to the missing children response organizations and allowed them make informed decisions for each case. Based on location-based mobile notifications that spread using an intelligent system, citizens close to points a missing child was last seen or where s/he was probable to be found became “social sensors” for the investigation, paying attention to people passing by, contributing and validating potential evidence.
ChildRescue delivered a modular, open source solution to be adopted by different voluntary organizations, according to their needs and the readiness of their systems. The project’s results were piloted in (a) missing children cases by the partners who were responsible for the Amber Alert and 116 000 hotline in those countries; and (b) missing unaccompanied minors cases supported by the Hellenic Red Cross, in complementarity with existing models of operation. Missing Children Europe and Red Cross ensured visibility of the results across all relevant response and volunteer organizations in Europe.