The mayor, Antonio Balmón, looked at the magnets on the telephones of the Urban Police, the pharmacies and the outpatient clinic on his refrigerator and asked himself: can't we have this all together on the mobile phone? “So we started talking to some local entrepreneurs and they created it.” This is how Emilia Briones, Deputy Mayor of Presidency and Security of the Cornellà de Llobregat City Council, remembers the birth, in her city, of the local security application M7, developed by the company Einsmer.
Ten years later, the pioneering initiative has become a “comprehensive security system” and has more than 150,000 users in 16 territories, mainly in the Barcelona metropolitan area.
“To improve security, in these ten years we have come to the conviction that it is necessary to increase the interaction of people with the entire ecosystem of the city, with the spaces, infrastructures and people that offer us protection,” says José Antonio Gallego, counselor Einsmer delegate and promoter of the M7. “The M7 system uses engineering and all the technologies at its disposal to achieve this interaction and feel more protected in risk situations,” adds Gallego.
It has multiple functionalities. From notifying the local police of an emergency in three seconds to a geolocation system that is especially useful for the elderly or people with Alzheimer's, to alerts that the public administration can send to citizens that, during the pandemic, were “especially useful,” according to Briones. It also serves to open the study rooms of two Cornellà libraries available 24 hours a day. Of all the evolutions, Gallego sticks with the one designed against sexist violence.
“It provides us with valuable information about the territory and involves citizens in prevention,” explains Joan Basagañas, mayor of Sant Just Desvern, another of the towns that uses the system. “It should be extended territorially to the entire metropolitan area, sharing data between city councils, Mossos and other security forces,” he believes.
“It allows citizens to add a more resilient and accessible communication channel with the Urban Guard. Unlike others, the application allows you to communicate urgent situations and other not so urgent ones. Geolocate, send images or notify in a more discreet way,” says the second lieutenant of the mayor of l’Hospitalet de Llobregat and head of the Security area, Jesús Husillos. According to him, an area for improvement is “to do pedagogy with citizens about its true usefulness.” “As it is a very simple mechanism to use, there are citizens who use it for maintenance incidents on public roads or for events that have already occurred. To use a health simile, it is about making citizens understand that calling 112, emergencies, is not the same as calling 061, consultations and procedures,” argues Husillos.
The creator of the M7 system says that the future plans are to “scale without dying of success.” To do this, they have alliances of global importance such as Siemens and Microsoft. And it is a system that could be used “in any city in the world,” says Gallego. Madrid and large public transport operators are testing some of their services.
Technologically, Gallego says that an evolution of the application is also being tested that will allow “sending video, audio and geolocation signals in real time” to the police in case of emergency using public and private cameras.
