The problem of missing children is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon, comprising legal, psychological and sociological aspects, which are aggravated due to the imminent panic of the close environment of the missing person. ChildRescue focus is also the provision of a tool for locating the unaccompanied refugee minors that are reported missing.

From the moment a child disappears, an intensive, yet typical, procedure is usually followed: Initially, a formal report is made by the family to the responsible authorities (in most cases to the police), in order to examine the conditions, the vulnerability and the risk level associated with the disappearance, before declaring the involved child as “missing”.

Then, search and rescue teams are composed with urgency, making available their assets, human resources and know-how. In cases of worrying or life threatening disappearances, the public is alerted through the National Public Emergency Broadcast System (TV and Radio spots, SMS, web directories of missing children and social media networks) and can provide critical information through hotline numbers.

When the case is resolved, it is archived by the involved organizations and the necessary support and assistance is provided to the person and its family in order to reconnect with a place of safety.

The phases of the missing person investigation cycle, on which the ChildRescue focus lies, as depicted in Figure, include: (a) Preparation in order to lead the investigation to proper directions from its onset, (b) Coordination, with new models for collaboration among the missing children response (voluntary) organizations, search and rescue teams, (c) Action in order to motivate both society and search and rescue teams to seamlessly contribute to the research, (d) Archiving of the case with security by the voluntary organizations.

ChildRescue demonstrates a bottom-up innovation and social collaboration exploiting digital hyper-connectivity and collaborative tools based on open data, open knowledge, open source software and open hardware, harnessing crowdsourcing, or crowdfunding models, related to the Collective Awareness Platforms (CAPs) initiative.

ChildRescue ’s Impact

The impact of this project is expected to benefit individuals and communities, by building a far more solid environment of better understanding and solidarity among citizens for issues affecting children and by developing technologies and innovative tools that progress science. 

These elements are in the core of the project and define the strategy for the purposes of dissemination and communication. In specific, the ChildRescue aims to have impact by

1)Reducing the time between reports of missing children and the time they are found by leveraging the untapped power of the network effect on a location-based basis over ubiquitous mobile devices

2)Better informed, real-time decisions and adjustments to the investigation action plan. Since reliance on ‘one size fits all’ remedies and experiences is no longer sufficient, the investigation will be adapted to the complex context, circumstances and characteristics of the missing child. These adaptations will be based on more accurate models for forecasting their whereabouts and for designating priority investigation areas.

3)Supporting good patterns of interaction. These include quickly raising awareness about the missing child, soliciting information and feedback effectively, establishing anonymized communication channels and transparently sharing appropriate information streams for crowd validation purposes.

4)More complete and consistent collection of reliable data on missing children respecting the privacy of both the children and the community involved

5)Citizens' rapid contributions , by changing the traditional notification patterns to real-time targeted alerts that take into account their proximity to the point a missing person was reported seen.

6)Encouraging missing children response stakeholders to leverage the unprecedented potential of ICT research outcomes and invest in new, collaborative models of operation and engagement during the investigation.

7)Strengthening trust and systematic cooperation between the entire chain of stakeholders involved in the investigation.