Safety Score

Safety Score is a smartphone-based system generating dynamic metrics on contagion risk in public premises. Processing data on average people density, distancing, and route congestion through indoor positioning, the system quantifies each premises' safety. The score informs decision-makers on what restrictions to impose and owners on what aspects need improvement.

Giulio Coppola, CEO of Mappin Technologies, MASt candidate in Applied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen most governments rely on indiscriminate closures of non-essential activities to prevent contagion. While such measures resulted effective, the economic and social impact on businesses and employees alike has been devastating. Owners suggested that closures were not based on accurate scientific analyses of the actual risk of viral spread. 

Without contesting the scientific rationale behind such measures, we believe, they were inherently flawed, relying only on static, high-level data. Static data is information that does not describe what is actually occurring in the space. While this might be appropriate for judging fire-safety, since danger stems from structural features, it fails to account for actual viral-safety, which is ultimately due to visitor density. 

High-level data has its shortcomings in that it can only inform blanket measures, but fails to account for the safety of individual premises. It was said that the risk of contagion in restaurants or gyms is strongly inferior than in bars or pubs, but in most countries they were imposed the same restrictions. We believe that the distinction should even be more specific: different premises from the same category will have different contagion exposure, so should not be under the same restrictions.

Our solutions serves both national healthcare decision-makers, providing them with more accurate data on what the actual contagion risk is in specific premises. This enables decision-makers to meet the challenges of relevant stake-holders to their restriction measures, by establishing them on solid foundations which reflect the actual contagion risk in the premises. On the other hand, it supports estates owners or management team, that can exploit the safety score in a number of situations. From showcasing their premises' safety as to encourage visitor return to being able to identify what factors are dragging their scores down and thus improve in the relevant areas, up to being able to exploit quantitative evidence to contest whether restrictions have been to harsh/unfair across different categories.

In the development of our solution we have been in close contact with our advisors, senior estates managers in the higher education and leisure industry, as well as with a number of other premises owners/managers working in airports, cultural, retail, and event industries. Similarly we have been engaged with Ordnance Survey and HM Land Registry, two main British public organizations as to understand what data might be most relevant.

Our solution is ultimately only for the public good in that we intend for it to be available to any commercial premises and national governments across as many countries as possible. As mentioned before, the main benefit of our solution is that it would provide decision-makers in national governments or health services with real-time data on what the contagion risk is in different public premises based on how visitors of such spaces behave. This would contribute to the public good by ensuring restrictive policies against viral spread are based on accurate data on what the actual contagion risk indoors is. This is because current restrictions are based on data that does not reflect how distanced and distributed are visitors indoors and that does not specify the risk of contagion in specific premises, but for entire categories. This would improve the effectiveness of the measures while potentially causing less damage to the economy and education through targeted restrictions. A further positive outcome would be for visitors to know the safety of the premises they intend to visit and for estates managers or premises' owners to be aware of what factors are dragging their space safety down. 

The ideal impact we would expect our solutions to have would be in improving response to future pandemics by improving the quality and accuracy on available data on what the risk of indoor viral transmission is. As indoor public premises are were most of contagion takes place, knowing which commercial estates categories or what specific premises should be undergoing capacity restrictions would strongly improve response effectiveness and targeting compared to how things have been done in the current pandemic. In this respect, the target population would be the entire populations of the cities, towns, regions or countries were our solution was to be adopted. Among those, commercial premises owners could receive a positive impact from our solution by being informed of what factors are causing the safety of their premises to be lowered, as opposed to the current situation where they have been imposed several measures to increase safety which ultimately did not prevent the imposition of restrictive policies for their spaces.

We are actively looking for partners to support our solution both by providing funding and space for testing. The latter will be a major focus in the following months, since the lifting of restrictive measures will enable for sufficient numbers of people to access indoor spaces and act as testers for the data collection and subsequent generation of metrics on average distancing, density and total numbers of visitors. We have been in contact with both estates managers of commercial premises owned by privates and with government organizations to provide advisory and further contacts with health organizations. Following intensive testing of our technology in conditions of increasing numbers of users, we then intend to get government entities further involved in ensuring our solution would be adopted as a main  contagion risk provider. Similarly, we plan on contacting providers of widespread navigation or social media apps such as Google, Apple, or Facebook to potentially integrate our solution as an API in their smartphone applications, so as to have it used by the largest numbers of people. Government support will be fundamental to ensure a successful outcome of the project, since the data is aimed to be used by decision-makers mostly.

At the moment we are focusing on measuring the efficacy of our technology. Relevant metrics will only be obtained once the solution is tested on significant scales equivalent to the real scenarios in which it would be of used. Similarly we will start collecting indications of interest from premises owners on one side and members of the public on the other, to understand whether our technology would eventually be used. We have started this process in a qualitative way contacting premises estates managers and government geospatial entities to receive advisory and suggestions on how to further develop our operational plan. 

The most significant barriers to the development and subsequent adoption of our solution are of financial and regulatory nature, as well as regarding testing capability.

Further financial resources, up to £200,000, will be needed to fully develop the solution, as it is a spin-off of our business we would not be able to profit from. We are addressing this barrier apply for funding both from this initiative and other available grants.

Since the efficacy of our solution in generating accurate, actionable information on contagion risk could only be measured with large scale testing in one or more premises, access to such large indoor spaces is fundamental for this to happen. We are trying to overcome this barrier partnering with relevant institutions.

Barriers to adoption would include a general diffidence from the public in using a tool that tracks their motion indoors. We have already started addressing this issue ensuring our technology generates data in a totally anonymous and closed form, so that no one would be able to access the identity of individuals generating the data, nor their movements. 

Last, government unwillingness to adopt the information in their decisions is another barrier we are overcoming partnering with geospatial government committees.

Ordnance Survey, King's College London, Her Majesty Land Registry, University of Cambridge, University College London.

We are applying to the Trinity Challenge to receive support in term of financial resources, technical and partnership development. Since successful development and deployment of our solution necessitates the provision of around £1M in three years and collaboration with a number of stakeholders including organizations with large premises, national governments, research groups, and potentially tech companies of the like of Google, winning the Trinity Challenge would be a unique opportunity to access all of the above. 

Beyond funding, which is of crucial importance for a successful outcome of the project, we are applying to the Trinity Challenge to have a more direct access to its supporting members, which include several of the stakeholders we would need to engage with. Similarly, we believe that collaboration with any of the supporting members would facilitate contact with national government decision-makers. This is particularly needed for countries other than the UK, where our partnership with Ordnance Survey and HM Land Registry provides us with a valuable access to British decision-makers. 

We are ultimately applying also to receive advisory in our operational plan, which we surely believe could benefit from best practices of renowned strategy consulting firms of the like of McKinsey.

Google, for their expertise in geospatial technology and global reach, that could allow our technology to rely on their infrastructure. Rather than having users download an additional app whose only purpose would be to generate data for the safety score, integrating our technology as an API in one of the apps with the widest diffusion in the public would strongly help the strength of our system. A similar opportunity could by offered by Facebook, which having the homonymous social network, Whatsapp, and Instagram could potentially offer an even wider reach. Blue Dot, John Hopkins University School of Public Health and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation would be invaluable partners in defining which of the metrics our system can generate would be more relevant to estimate contagion risk, as well as in determining the reference values on which to establish the premises' safety score. We would also strongly benefit from advisory or pro-bono work from McKinsey, which, being one of the leading strategy consultancies globally, could surely help us shaping an effective and successful operational plan.