Mutual assistance service Ret.io, created by two volunteers in Mexico, actually became a civil alert system in the country

Three years ago in Mexico (the country where Ciudad Juárez, the most dangerous city in the world ), two friends from the city of Mérida opened a Twitter account to warn people about the onerous police checks that too often caused various inconveniences for the citizens.



The free service, called Ret.io , has become a flexible, automated system covering all of Mexico. The service was signed by 27,000 people, and more than 100,000 people visit it per month, and the corresponding iPhone application is among the top ten in the category Navigation.

')

Today, with the help of Retio, Mexican citizens are warning each other about current problems: shootings, killings, threats, vandalism, blocked roads, abuse of authority, all kinds of corruption, robberies, fires, blackouts, road accidents.

From Twitter account to a service that helps 100,000 users per month

Any Twitter user can post messages about important urban issues, which are automatically classified into categories and linked to the map. For this, also made a mobile application, but only for the Iphone.







Messages are posted to the appropriate Twitter account for each city (for example: @retioMID for the city of Mérida). The system uses the available location information, and using the wiki, users can add the necessary information. Spam and retweets are automatically deleted.



The creators of the service, 29-year-old Mario Romero Zavala (Mario Romero Zavala) and 24-year-old Jose Antonio Bolio (José Antonio Bolio), began work on the project in January 2011, but launched it in Merida only in July. Then, in August, the service was expanded to the capital (Mexico City), as well as Monterrey and Guadalajara, the largest cities in the country. In February 2012, they added an application for the iPhone, and expanded the coverage to the whole of Mexico.

“The original goal was to organize and improve Twitter so that you can avoid the various problem situations that people face every day in the cities of Mexico,” Romero said . “In different cities, users started using hash tags to inform each other, but this was not an ideal solution - and we wanted to offer a tool that would be more convenient for this. At the moment, the work is only partially completed. ”



“Some reports help fellow citizens avoid life-threatening situations, such as skirmishes or blocked roads — some of which may be related to the war against drug cartels; However, the latter should not worry much about this, because all cases and so from the category of public ”



Ret.io is used much more as a tool to collect data on abuse of authority and corruption, so some policemen spoke negatively about the service, he said.

However, in the resort city of Cancun and the capital city of Mexico City, local authorities publish the answers to the messages of citizens directly in Ret.io.



It is particularly impressive that Ret.io was created by only two volunteers , and without attracting thousands of budgets - on the basis of open source projects. “Our entire system, starting with the databases (postgres, redis) and ending with the front-end (jquery, bootstrap), is based on open source , and, of course, Google Maps and Twitter,” Zavala said.

“The proliferation of Internet technologies in Mexico, and around the world, makes the distortion of real-world information a very difficult task,” says Zavala . “It also forms a society where citizens help each other to avoid unpleasant situations.”

Ret.IO not only informs about problems, but also accumulates statistics useful for police and citizens.

Here you can see very interesting statistics on the capital of Mexico (as well as on any other region). Its value is growing every day.

Information on the group of problems and time of occurrence:

You can see where the attacks are most often committed in Mexico City:

The creators of the service are still working on improving it.

Civic Mutual Aid Services - A Global Trend?

Similar services are being created in other countries, other countries - for example, in Panama: Mi Panamá Transparente







Interestingly, Mexico is among the top ten countries in terms of the number of Twitter users !



And the service is excellent - useful for both locals and tourists!