International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women was commemorated on the 25th of November, as 56 years have passed since the chauvinist murder of the three Mirabal sisters in the Dominican Republic. In spite of the great advances that the world has experienced in this half of the century, attacks and murders against women continue being committed on a daily basis and in all countries, developed or not.

Someone has referred to this problem as a kind of silent terrorism, which does not raise flags but which is as lethal as any bloodthirsty cause that discriminates and kills for a belief. This problem affects everyone and no simple solution can be found. However, it is necessary to deal with it and I think of the ways that science and technology could contribute to protecting women who are at risk of becoming victims of violence.

As a researcher, I have had the opportunity to work on some projects aimed at the monitoring and surveillance of people, through the GPS systems, Bluetooth and algorithms based on neural networks. They allow to obtain information about potentially dangerous individuals, especially abusers.

For example, the Guardian project which we had developed at BISITE in collaboration with Nebusens and Oesia Groups, uses environmental intelligence through technologies such as A-GPS, GPRS and ZigBee. These technologies are used to locate and track people and send a warning signal if necessary. The behaviour of abusers is carefully studied and we try to identify the behaviours that reveal their intentions of approaching a victim. In such battle, opponents live and relate with the society in an apparently normal way until they are discovered. We must put our effort into educating, raising awareness and preventing. If this issue can be helped by science and technology, then the work us researchers do, goes beyond what we had done in universities, companies and at research centres and it means that everything else will have been worth it.

Posted by Juan M. Corchado

Juan Manuel Corchado (15 May 1971, Salamanca, Spain) is Professor at the University of Salamanca. He has been Vice-Rector for Research from 2013 to 2017 and Director of the Science Park of the University of Salamanca. Elected as Dean of the Faculty of Science twice, he holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of the West of Scotland. He leads the renowned BISITE (Bioinformatics, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology) Research Group, created in 2000. Director of the IoT Digital Innovation Hub and President of the AIR Institute, J. M. Corchado is also Visiting Professor at the Osaka Institute of Technology since January 2015, Visiting Professor at the Universiti Malaysia Kelantan and Member of the Advisory Group on Online Terrorist Propaganda of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (EUROPOL). J. M. Corchado has been president of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, and academic coordinator of the University Institute for Research in Art and Animation Technology at the University of Salamanca, as well as researcher at the Universities of Paisley (UK), Vigo (Spain) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK). He currently combines all his activity with the direction of Master programmes in Security, Digital Animation, Mobile Telephony, Information Systems Management, Internet of Things, Social Media, 3D Design and Printing, Blockchain, Z System, Industry 4.0, Agile Project Management, and Smart Cities & Intelligent Buildings, at the University of Salamanca and his work as editor-in-chief of the journals ADCAIJ (Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal), OJCST (Oriental Journal of Computer Science and Technology) or Electronics MDPI (Computer Science & Engineering section). J. M. Corchado mainly works on projects related to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, IoT, Fog Computing, Edge Computing, Smart Cities, Smart Grids and Sentiment Analysis. He has recently been included in the board of trustees of the AstraZeneca Foundation, along with other health professionals and researchers recognised for bringing scientific knowledge closer to society.

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