PropTiger incorporates Safety Score in House Hunting

We are all aware that the rate of violence and crime against women in the nation is escalating every day. In such a situation, we believe it is our responsibility to contribute to the solution in whatever way we can. Thus, we at PropTiger have incorporated an extremely useful score in order to gauge the safety quotient of any given location while house hunting. Though the score is designed keeping women and their safety in mind, there is no denying the utility of the Safety Score across all age and gender groups, in every part of the country.

The Safety Score comes to you from SafetiPin, a social enterprise dedicated to utilizing data to provide relevant information to individuals and social communities regarding the level of safety in a location. The score is meant to be a direct reflection of the perception of safety of any given area, with a higher score indicating a higher level of safety.

SafetiPin uses a combination of trained auditors and crowd-sourced information to conduct audits. These audits are conducted after dark (at till about 10pm), following global methods that suggest that safety perceptions are most acute at night.

It is known that the location, setting, availability of street lights, presence of watchmen etc. play a vital role in guaranteeing one's safety in any given area. Thus, Safetipin conducts rigorous audits of the following 9 parameters when evaluating the Safety Score. These parameters have been chosen keeping in mind the safety audit studies done in the last 20 years. Moreover, they have been validated through a global panel of experts. These essential parameters are:

1. Lighting: Presence of street lights and other sources of illumination like well-lit public spaces.
2. Visibility: This is to evaluate if individuals and vehicles can be discerned clearly in the area.
3. Openness: This is a measure of how visible and noticeable are the places around the area.
4. Crowd: This is an important factor that reflects if the area is heavily crowded, relatively crowded or sparsely crowded.
5. Diversity: This parameter takes into account the percentage of women and children in the location.
6. Security: Presence of security guards, watchmen, police etc.
7. Transport: This parameter measures the ease of access of the location to modes of public transport like bus stops, metro stations and auto stands.
8. Footpath: This factor takes into account the presence of footpaths and how convenient it is to walk in the locality.
9. The overall feel: This parameter measures the general sense of safety in the area and whether or not it 'feels' safe for someone to be there.

Finally, a score is generated based upon a combination of safety audits and public domain information, using SafetiPin's proprietary algorithm. We have launched this score in Delhi and NCR as of now, and plan to expand it to as many states and cities as possible in the near future. We believe that a Safety Score is indispensable in times like these, and can go a long way ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the citizens.