Mappsafe Pty. Ltd. is a new company seeking funding on Indegogo for an application that aims to make your journey safer.

The Melbourne, Australia-based firm claims that the application is the world’s first crowd-sourced mobile app in this space, and that the it reduces violence in public areas by mapping safe and unsafe places.

Mappsafe gathers information from users, and shares the information with other users and, where applicable, with authorities, to improve general awareness, policing, street lighting and to increase community safety.

The product use case put forward by the company actually makes a lot of sense: “Imagine yourself going to work, traveling abroad or returning home late at night and not worrying if the area you are in is safe or not,” the pitch reads. The video would indicate that while the product can be used by anyone, it’s clearly pitched to women who fear violence in an urban environment.

The product strictly retains confidentiality of sources and you can tag everything from a shady lane at night, where street lighting is deficient, through to areas which are prone to public violence, for example in a night entertainment area.

Although the claim that the app is a world-first could be a touch stretching things (it’s probably the first crowdfunded, it isn’t the first app in this space), it does definitely stand out from similar and controversial apps such as SktechFactor and Ghetto Tracker. While both of the latter apps were concerned with mapping unsafe neighborhoods, Mappsafe is much more about identifying smaller areas, say as a laneway, that may provide an unsafe environment, particularly for women.

Mappsafe will launch first on Android with iOS to follow in March 2015.

The company is seeking $10,000 on Ingiegogo and has currently raised $1564 at the time of writing.

Img credit: Mappsafe