The first three hours following abduction are the most critical, according to the BCA.
The AMBER Alert™ plan is a voluntary partnership between law-enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the wireless industry. The purpose of the plan is to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases, broadcasting critical details to assist in search and recovery efforts of missing children.
The AMBER Alert™ plan claims to “galvanize the entire community”, through the use of radio, television, digital billboard, text messaging, emails, digital road signage, desktop/embed widgets and social network.
It is our belief the existing plan falls short in the use of current technologies to maximize broadcast reach and impact of active AMBER Alerts™. We believe a mobile application combining advanced geo-mobile communications technology and social networking components, coupled with increased consumer mobile data connectivity will improve the existing AMBER Alert™ plan.
What we believe is needed:
1. An application that pulls real time location data from disparate sources. Facebook check-ins, Twitter locations, Google Check-ins. Yelp, and Foursquare
2. Active alerts received by App users will post dynamically to connected social network profiles.
3. Push notifications to Mobile Phone, Facebook and Twitter when active AMBER Alerts are initiated.
4. Similar to the sonar app. possibly based on Zip Code or Area Code (or perhaps Foursquare “radar” technology)
5. Would be triggered by the current amber alert system
6. App users would have share functionality “in-app” – social, txt and email
7. Can report a sighting with a button push (would notify police on GPS location and tag incident). Perhaps posted to a monitored Twitter or Facebook feed.
8. Additionally the app would have functionality to save your children's safety information on the device (current photo & basic physical description)
9. The app would notify the adaptor every 6 months to update safety info