Barcelona tries to establish safer circuits for women athletes

Running outdoors is a very common practice in both large cities and small towns. Even so, there are still many women who do not feel safe to play sports on the street and try to adapt their schedules or routes so as not to feel threatened. In fact, according to the latest studies, one in four women feels insecure when training in public spaces and almost 20% report having suffered harassment while practicing sports.

For this reason, many women decide to avoid going for a run before dawn or after dusk to ensure they have light throughout the entire route, and they also try to avoid less frequented areas. To reverse this problem and even increase female participation in sports, this summer the Catalan capital has launched the pilot test of the Safe Running Routes, an initiative that seeks to increase the perception of safety among female athletes through technology and volunteers.

The test, which will be tested until the end of December, has been conceived by the Barcelona start-up The MotherTrees Innovation Ecosystem and was the winner of the "Circuitos deportivos en femenino" (Women's Sports Circuits) competition, launched last year by the Barcelona Sports Institute and the BIT Habitat Foundation, responsible for some of the great innovations in the Catalan capital, such as the 21st century "panot". The proposal also emerged from the Barcelona Innova Lab Sports, the program of the Barcelona Sports Hub, inaugurated in 2023 to position the city in the field of sports tech.

The pilot test launched this summer the free SafeNow application, which allows athletes to send alert messages. By simply pressing a button, and from their own mobile phone or smartwatch, users can send alarm signals to both predefined contacts ---such as friends or family--- and to volunteers who are near the area at that moment. Thus, the notification pops up on the mobiles of these contacts and volunteers, in the form of an alarm message similar to those sent by civil protection to alert of meteorological phenomena. In addition, the application also shares the user's real-time location, even if the mobile phone is in airplane mode or without coverage.

Likewise, the app also allows activating a pre-alarm mode, in case a woman starts to feel insecure at some point but does not yet feel in a situation of real danger, it can be activated in case her contacts need to be quickly notified. In addition, other users of the application can also access this data to know in which areas or hours more alerts have been sent and to adapt their routes.

Beyond improving the safety of women when practicing outdoor sports, Daniel Dümig, co-founder of The MotherTrees Innovation Ecosystem, believes that the app "can be applied in other areas and improve the safety of women in large events and facilities such as nightclubs, stadiums or even in large train stations if someone is detected trying to access the track area."

In these spaces, any user who had the application downloaded in a nightclub or at a large event could send an alarm message so that security forces could arrive quickly. The application, in fact, is already being used in countries like Germany, where it has more than a million downloads. In the Catalan capital, agreements are being reached to extend this app to security in large facilities and venues and improve their safety.

For now, however, the application is already being tested in a first safe circuit of 1,500 meters located on the Paseo Marítimo, specifically between Arquitecte Sert and Bac de Roda streets, that is, between the beaches of Nova Icària and Mar Bella. Although Dümig acknowledges that "it is not one of the most insecure routes" due to the continuous presence of vehicle traffic and people, it is one of the most frequented by runners, so it could serve to test the pilot and then extend it throughout the rest of the city and even export the system to other localities.

For now, the volunteers who have been deployed along the circuit to assist the athletes are agents of the Sant Martí district's Urban Guard who will run along the delimited section. However, in the future the idea is to create specific training so that more people can become volunteers. But always in a controlled manner, requiring prior training and selection to ensure that this figure is truly useful. "The more volunteers, the better, but the more controlled, the safer women will feel," emphasizes Dümig. In addition to seeking new volunteers to involve residents, runner meetups will also be held along the sports circuit route to extend this application throughout Barcelona's runner community.

Likewise, starting in October, five differentiated spaces designated as Safe Zones will also be established along this delimited route. Women will be able to go to these facilities to be assisted by the staff of these centers, who have received specific training on how to handle different emergency situations.

These centers that will act as Safe Zones starting in October are: the Mar Bella municipal sports complex, the Mar Bella municipal nautical base, the Litoral comprehensive management building, the Nova Icària municipal sports center, and the municipal sailing center. It will be in December when the results will be evaluated with the intention of being able to extend these routes to the entire Catalan capital and even replicate the model in other locations.

The MotherTrees Innovation Ecosystem has been the company responsible for innovating this winning solution of the ideas competition presented by the City Council. The company, founded in the Catalan capital in 2022, is based on its own work methodology called Innovation Solution Puzzle which, like a puzzle, seeks to offer complete and multidisciplinary innovation solutions, fitting the different pieces together to solve a problem completely. Thus, for example, in this case the Safe Running Routes initiative presents different proposals to offer an optimal solution: from the mobile application, through volunteers and the creation of safe zones.

In fact, it is in the field of innovation where the co-founders have specialized. Thus, they created the Asics Innovation Hub, the sports brand's start-up creation program based in Barcelona. It was thanks to this project that they gained experience on how to work with large corporations and how to come up with innovative proposals and solutions. In 2022, they decided to go a step further and created The MotherTrees Innovation Ecosystem, a start-up whose philosophy, as the company's name indicates, is that large trees, understood as large corporations, should not be selfish beings that keep all the nutrients around them, but rather feed the ecosystem so that the whole prospers.

Thus, from the Barcelona-based start-up, they work on different innovation projects for large international corporations, such as Nestlé, but also with Catalan companies, such as Veritas or Cafés Cornellà, and public entities. In nine weeks, the team works to provide an innovative solution to different challenges of corporations from all sectors, from automotive or agriculture to issues related to sustainability, although at first they specialized mainly in the wellness sector, due to the previous trajectory of both founders.

The methodology they follow is the co-creation of the solution with the requesting company or entity, creating a pilot test that they subsequently carry out to analyze its results and possible future applications. In addition, the founders of The MotherTrees Innovation Ecosystem were also responsible for promoting The Venue Barcelona, a center for innovative companies in the field of music, sports and large events promoted by Barcelona Serveis Municipals (BSM) and installed in the Olympic Stadium.

Outside of Barcelona, they have also replicated this model in Valencia, creating the Valencia City Lab, a space where they work jointly with companies to solve city challenges, such as how to make it resistant to the impact of extreme weather phenomena, especially after the experience of the DANA in nearby towns.