Researchers receive £50k in funding for SaferStreetsAI project

Description

Researchers from the University of Huddersfield and the University of Manchester have secured £50,000 of funding for an innovative project using AI to identify the safest walking routes.

The funding has been allocated through RISE, an accelerated programme tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG), led by researchers at the University of Manchester and its SPRITE+ network.

Subject

The project is known as SaferStreetsAI: AI-informed pedestrian routing based on perceived safety, and is led by Professor Simon Parkinson, Professor of Cyber Security, and supported by Dr Paloma Liu, Senior Lecturer in Project Planning, both at the University of Huddersfield, and Dr Helen Zheng, Senior Lecturer in Spatial Planning at the University of Manchester.

Professor Parkinson commented: “SaferStreetsAI uses AI to better understand how people experience safety in everyday environments and how that information can be positively used to help citizens and policymakers make more informed decisions. By using computational approaches to analyse a large amount of street-level imagery, we can move beyond traditional crime data and provide insights into the environmental factors that shape perceptions of safety. This allows us to support more informed route choices for individuals and provide practical, evidence-based guidance for planners and local authorities to improve public spaces.”