Android Safety App: A Mobile-Based Framework for Emergency Assistance Using GPS and Real-Time Alerts

Abstract

Personal safety in urban environments has become a pressing concern due to rising incidents of harassment, theft, accidents, and natural emergencies. Traditional safety solutions, such as manual helpline calls or SMS alerts, are limited by response delays and lack of real-time tracking With the rapid rise of smartphones, safety and emergency management applications have gained importance, especially in urban areas where crime rates, accidents, and natural disasters affect vulnerable groups such as women, children, and the elderly. Traditional safety measures rely on manual reporting and helplines, which often lead to delayed response. This study proposes an Android Safety App framework that integrates GPS-based location tracking, SOS emergency alerts, voice activation, and real-time communication to provide timely assistance during emergencies. The application allows users to send SOS messages with live location to pre-registered emergency contacts and nearby authorities. The system architecture leverages Android Studio, Google Maps API, Firebase Database, and SMS/Call APIs. Testing on a dataset of 50 simulated emergency scenarios showed that the application achieved 97% successful alert delivery, with an average response time of 4.2 seconds. User evaluation confirmed its usability, reliability, and ease of operation. The results demonstrate that the proposed Android Safety App significantly improves emergency responsiveness, bridging the gap between vulnerable individuals and timely help.

Introduction

The increasing prevalence of smartphones provides an opportunity to enhance personal safety, particularly in emergencies such as accidents, harassment, natural disasters, or health crises. Traditional safety measures like helplines often fail due to delays or lack of precise location tracking. An Android-based Safety App addresses these gaps by integrating GPS tracking, instant SOS alerts, voice/gesture triggers, and real-time communication with emergency contacts.

The app follows a client-server architecture, with the Android device as the client and cloud services (Firebase/MySQL) managing data storage, authentication, and notifications. Key modules include user management, location tracking, emergency alerts, input handling, and secure database storage. The workflow involves user registration, continuous location monitoring, emergency triggering via SOS button or hands-free inputs, alert notifications to contacts, and logging of responses.

The design emphasizes usability, reliability, security, privacy, and scalability, ensuring one-touch emergency activation, redundant alert channels, encrypted personal data, and potential future integration with IoT devices. The implementation using Android Studio (Java/Kotlin), Firebase, Google Maps API, and SMS API successfully provides a real-time, secure, and user-friendly mobile safety solution.

Conclusion

The development of the Android Safety App highlights the growing importance of technology-driven solutions in ensuring personal safety in today’s unpredictable environment. With rising concerns related to women’s safety, child protection, senior citizen assistance, and emergency responses during accidents or natural disasters, the app provides a reliable, fast, and user-friendly emergency response mechanism. By integrating GPS-based real-time tracking, SMS notifications, and cloud-backed data storage, the app successfully bridges the gap between individuals in danger and their emergency contacts. Its one-touch SOS functionality, voice and gesture triggers, and offline SMS alert system ensure that help can be summoned in minimal time, even in low-connectivity regions. The system also emphasizes data security and user privacy, ensuring that sensitive information like personal contacts and location logs is well protected. From testing and evaluation, the app demonstrates reliability, scalability, and accessibility, making it an effective solution for different user groups, including urban and rural populations. Overall, the Android Safety App represents not only a technological innovation but also a socially impactful solution that can contribute to reducing risks and saving lives.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2025 Ankita Biradar, Khushi Dhargave, Kajal Rangari, Gayatri Musale, Rakesh M. Moharle. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.