UC3M4Safety - Multidisciplinary Team for Detecting, Preventing and Combating Violence against Women

UC3M4Safety is a Multidisciplinary Team to Detect, Prevent and Combat Violence against Women compound of six research groups, five from the Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) and one from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM).  

The groups involved in the team come from the Polytechnic School and from the Gender Studies Institute of UC3M. Three departments from the Polytechnic School face the problem of preventing and combating the violence from a technological point of view. Signal Theory and Communications Department, Telematics Engineering Department and Electronic Technology Department apply their knowledge in order to protect victims using the most recent smart sensors, recognition algorithms and security in wireless networks. On-line detection of human moods, dangerous objects or agressors, with a "transparent" wearable system, would allow victims to prevent and combat new episodes of violence. Of course, this system is assessed by the Gender Studies Institute thanks to its large knowledge of violence against women and protecting victims. Additionally, researchers from Center of Industrial Electronics, (UPM-CEI), experts in Wireless Sensor Networks will provide their expertise in machine learning algorithms for multi-sensor data treatment.

Team Milestones

January 2019 - December 2020

▶ EMPATIA-CM (Comprehensive Protection of Victims of Gender-Based Violence Through Multimodal Affective Computing) financed under the programme of synergetic R&D projects in new and emerging scientific areas at the frontier of science and of an interdisciplinary nature, co-financed with the Operational Programmes of the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund, 2014-2020, of the Community of Madrid (Ref: Y2018/TCS-5046)

EMPATÍA-CM is an investigative project which main objective is understand gender violence victims reactions to risky situations, generate mechanisms for automatic detection of these situations, and analyse how respond to these situations along a coordinated and effective way to protect them in the best possible way.

EMPATIA-CM is composed by two groups: UC3MTEC (Leader) led by Celia López Ongil and IEG (Beneficiary) led by Rosa San Segundo Manuel.

Septiembre 2019 

Carlos III University of Madrid provides a high degree of interdisciplinary research for international investigative projects where Social and Human Sciences must be connected and collaborate with Information and Communications Technologies in order to improve the life quality of European citizens. The open concept of global departments for teaching the students of the whole university, as well as the large experience in collaborative research makes this university a key institution in research projects where different approaches must be undertaken to study and analyze a common necessity, and propose common solutions to attend and solve today’s society challenges.

The UC3M4Safety team has been already dedicated to project calls for public funding in the framework of European Union, in a willing to develope an efficient and applicable solution to the problem of violence against weak elements in the current societies: women, children, eldery, etc.

The six groups which composed UC3M4Safety have realized along its research and development projects the importance of the gender violence approach.  All of them agreed a year ago in the necessity of working together to solve this problem with a techical and a social perspective. First works have started, developing a proof of concept to detect agressiveness, fear, and other human reactions to violence. Contacts with victims' associations and law enforcement agencies have also been carried out, confirming the interest in the solution proposed.

CONTACT US

Team leader: Celia López

📧 email: celia@ing.uc3m.es 

PARTICIPANTS

 1. Electronic Technology (UC3M)

 1. Electronic Technology (UC3M)

The Electronic Technology Department has researchers with experience in hardware acceleration of signal processing, sensor instrumentation and wireless sensor networks as well as in low power digital circuits and embedded systems, in terms of publications, training and research projects. Most of these projects included the use of high processing microelectronic devices within distributed systems, managing large amounts of data coming from sensors and dealing with hard conditions (interferences, ionizing radiation (fault tolerance), high degree of autonomy (low power consumption), ageing, intentional attacks (security), etc.)