KAIMOSI FRIENDS UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

MOBILE APPLICATION FOR MISSING PERSON

JULIA ANDIA
SIT/0002/2017

A project proposal documentation submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the award of degree of Bachelor of Science in Information
Technology of Kaimosi Friends University College.

August, 2021
DECLARATION
I declare that this project documentation is my original work prepared with no other than the
indicated sources and support and has not been presented at this or any other University for any
award.

Signature…………… …………..Date…………………

JULIA ANDIA GRACE

SIT/0002/2017
CERTIFICATION
The undersigned certify that they have supervised and coordinated and hereby recommend for
acceptance of Kaimosi Friends University College a project documentation entitled “MOBILE
APPLICATION FOR MISSING PERSON”

Signed………………………………..Date………………………………
[Supervisor name]
Department of Information Technology
School of computing and Information Technology
Kaimosi Friends University College

Signed…………………………………Date……………………………………
[School Coordinator name]
Department of Information Technology
School of computing and Information Technology
Kaimosi Friends University College
ABSTRACT
It is very terrifying to be unable to locate our loved ones, several cases of missing people have
been reported for many years where most of the searches turn out unsuccessful. When looking
for missing loved one, the first step involves making a report to the Kenya Police who are
significantly understaffed and already have a lot of work. Due to the understaff situation, the
police do not pay much attention to missing person cases.
The use of traditional media such as newspapers to share information of a missing person is
limited to few persons who have the resources to contact the media. On the other hand, the use of
social media which is free, often results in confusion and mixed reports because of lack of
control in how the reports are disseminated. This negatively affects the success rate of finding a
missing person. It is important to find a centralized solution of managing reports of missing
persons to increase the success rate of reuniting these missing persons with their families.
This study analyzed the current systems of reporting missing persons in Kenya and
internationally as a way of identifying the challenges facing these systems. With the challenges
highlighted the proposed application will provide solution and be more reliable.The mobile
application was designed to be interactive and user-friendly to ensure that anyone can use the
application with ease.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1...................................................................................................................................................6
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................6
1.1 Background of study......................................................................................................................6
1.2 Statement of the problem.............................................................................................................7
1.3 Main aim of the project.................................................................................................................7
1.4 Scope of the study.........................................................................................................................7
1.5 Limitation of the study...................................................................................................................8
1.6 Purpose of the study......................................................................................................................8
1.7 Justification of the project.............................................................................................................8
CHAPTER 2...................................................................................................................................................9
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................................9
2.1 INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................................9
2.2 Analysis of the existing systems.....................................................................................................9
2.4 How the proposed systems will address these challenges..........................................................11
METHODOLOGY.....................................................................................................................................12
3.1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................12
3.2TARGET POPULATION.......................................................................................................................12
3.3SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY...................................................................................12
3.4SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS..................................................................................................................13
3.4.2Hardware requirement..............................................................................................................13
References.................................................................................................................................................14
APPENDIX 1...............................................................................................................................................15
TIME SCHEDULE OF THE PROJECT.........................................................................................................15
Ghant chart........................................................................................................................................15
APPENDIX 2...............................................................................................................................................16
BUDGET OF THE STUDY.........................................................................................................................16
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of study
Missing persons has become one of the major issues in the country, about 20,000 people go
missing every year. Only 40% of the people are found after long time and only 30% of the
people are found within the first three months of reporting (Omweri, 2015). Also others don’t
manage to come back to their loved ones.
The first few hours are very critical to the success of tracing missing person and reuniting them
with their family.Duringthe searchfor the missing person, it is crucial to exhaust all resources
available to ensure that as many people as possible areon the lookout for this person. Effective
tracing is greatly reduced if appropriate technology is not included, especially mobile
application, to help capture and share compressive update about missing people.
One can make a report at any police station but this information will be forwarded to a station
with a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officer (Chacha, 2015). Once this is done, then
the agonizing wait begins for the CID police to take action. This is extremely frustrating to the
family members because the CID officers do not communicate adequately with them often
keeping them in the dark about the progress of the case, this is because not all police stations in
the country are equipped to deal with missing person reports.
Due to the delay of the searches by the police, many people resort to the media to appeal to
members of the public to help them search for their loved ones. This often leads to confusion due
to there being many varied channels of communication.Someorganizations such as CHILD
Welfare Society of Kenya(CWSK) have set up reporting websites as a way of streamlining the
dissemination of information to the public. Another organization, MISSING CHILD KENYA
(MCK) uses Facebook, twitter and instagram handles to share reports of missing children. Their
concentration is children under the age of 18 meaning organization will not handle any case of
missing adult.
This application will help in the development of a mobile application that will automate and
simplify the search process and increase effective results since everything will be centralized and
sharing of information to the member will be much easier.
1.2 Statement of the problem
Finding missing person using manual systems has very long procedure and takes more time.
Even more time is require for launching First Information Report in police station. Also time
required for finding lost person is more.Finding a person who has gone missing largely depends
on how far and fast the missing person alert is spread. The public cannot act even if they come in
contact with the missing person unless they are aware that one is indeed missing.
At this moment, reporting a missing person begins with the police. Unfortunately the police do
not have functional centralized system that the public can access to share details of their missing
loved ones to help in the search. In this case, the organizations in our country that provide social
media support for missing person are largely fragmented and this results to many varied voice on
social media spreading this information. This result to confusion as there is lack of a focal
reporting point hence the public ignores the information.
Also during manual process number of manpower for searching lost person is less. Some
existing application does not show the proper information about the Missing person, which is
difficult to find out missing person. Some missing person related website only shows the
database of missing person.
This study is to investigate the current systems for searching for missing persons, identify its
weakness and come up with a more efficient application to ensure that missing persons are
reunited with their families and friend within the shortest time possible.
1.3 Main aim of the project
The main aim of this project is to examine the state of the current system of reporting and
tracking missing persons in Kenya. The result of this process would help in the development of a
mobile phone application that will help in finding missing person.

1.3.1 The specific objective of the study are:

I. To identify and analyze challenges faced by the existing system of reporting missing
persons in Kenya.
II. To analyze requirements of a mobile application for missing persons.
III. To develop, design and implement a mobile application that will improve the efficiency
of reporting and tracing a missing people in Kenya.

1.4 Scope of the study

The scope of the project being proposed will focus on missing persons only and will be limited
to Vihiga Count as area of study where the current systems being used will be analyzed and what
can be done to improve the functionality of these systems. The proposed system is after
automating the search process for missing person making it easier and saves a lot of time.
1.5 Limitation of the study
Limitations are potential weaknesses or problems of the study identified by the researcher. The
limitation often relate to inadequate measures of variables, small samples size, errors in
measurement and other factors related to data collection and analysis

These limitations are usually useful to other potential researchers who may want to conduct the
study.

These limitation of the study include;

1. Inadequate time to analyze the current system.

2. Inadequate financial resources.
3. Bias responses.

1.6 Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is to develop and design an interactive and user-friendly mobile
application that will aid in search for missing persons in the country by reducing time during the
search and the process, sharing of complete and valid information to the public and reunite the
missing persons with their loved ones.

With many people using mobile devices, it will be the easiest way of sharing information since
users can download the application and use it easily.

1.7 Justification of the project

The current systems for searching missing people has major drawbacks which bring the need of
designing a mobile application. This mobile application is going to automate all the activities are
involved in the tracing of missing persons. Automation of these activities reduce human effort,
saves time and resources for both the police and the families of the missing and the sharing of
valid information is faster and easier.
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter critically analyze the existing technology and review their literature on this
innovation- Missing person application.Reviewing already existing applications with operations
similar to the proposed solution will help guide the research in a direction that will help produce
the optimal application for the challenges faced in the current systems. After analyzing and
reviewing the existing systems, the proposed system will provide solution to the drawbacks to
the current systems.

2.2 Analysis of the existing systems

This section analyzes systems that exist that help in the reporting and searching for missing
persons. Some of these systems are briefly described below;

2.2.1 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Central Tracing Agency
Advances in technology have had a major impact on tracing, mainly by speeding up the
transmission of information to huge numbers of people, according to the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Central Tracing Agency. The ICRC started tracing in the
late 1800s to alert families to the whereabouts and well-being of detained relatives. It currently
relays hundreds of thousands of messages linking families back together and providing the peace
of mind and closure so often absent in times of crises. In 2009 alone, more than 253,000
messages were collected and delivered. Tracing assisted the repatriation of Congolese prisoners
of war, and enabled nearly 200 video calls between detainees and their families in Afghanistan.

2.2.3 Google person finder

Following Haiti’s earthquake in January 2010, Google developed an open source web
application Person Finder, which is a registry and message board for survivors, family and
friends to post and search for information about one another's whereabouts following a natural
disaster. Up until now, following five natural disasters, the registry has collected more than
200,000 names.

2.2.4 The UK Charity Missing People

Similarly, the UK Charity Missing People provides real time information of people reported as
missing held in their database via a clickable map of the UK regions. The map allows the public
to see who is missing from where, provide information on the number of annual helpline calls
received from each region and invites the public to join the search. This provides a useful but
partial view, as it only includes those known to the charity and reported via family and kinship
networks.

2.2.5 The Unified Victim Identification System (UVIS)

The Unified Victim Identification System (UVIS) is a comprehensive disaster management
system that manages and coordinates activities related to missing persons reporting and victim
identification after a disaster. Following September 11, New York City officials decided that
they needed a way to efficiently collect missing persons reports and share information between
emergency responders and investigators following a mass casualty incident. In the days after
September 11, New York City collected approximately 40,000 missing person reports on paper.
It took hundreds of detective’s months to track down leads on missing persons and two years to
identify the remains of decedents.

2.2.5The Dutch Cell Broadcast

The Dutch government has also adopted a mobile phone danger alert system that sends text
messages to people who could be affected by natural disasters or terrorist attacks. The system,
called Cell Broadcast, uses GSM technology to identify cell phone users in a particular area. If a
disaster occurs, a message is sent to all phones in the area, warning of the danger.

CNN's reporter, Clothier (2005) reported that the Cell Broadcast system will be used in addition
to the other warning systems which are currently used if disaster strikes, such as sirens and
special emergency broadcasts on radio and television. This is a more instantaneous way of
informing people about what is going on real time. It's an extra medium to communicate directly
with people during a disaster.

2.3 Challenges of the existing systems

This chapter makes it clear that there is lack of centralized reporting system that handles missing
persons’ records in Kenya. Police records in Kenya’s police stations are collected in the
traditional, manual format resulting in fragmented information that is not shared easily to the
other police stations. This makes it difficult to track any progress made in reported cases of
missing persons. Missing Child Kenya and Child Welfare Society of Kenya work independently
and focus on children under the age of 18. In the unfortunate event that a person older than 18
goes missing, the police stations and traditional media are the only available channels that can be
used to report the incident.

2.4 How the proposed systems will address these challenges

The main aim of the proposed system is to automate and provide a centralized reporting system
for missing persons in the country. This will provide a solution to the members and the law
enforcement in the search for the missing person. The proposed system will be interactive and
user friendly where everyone will be able to navigate with ease.

The system will have the following advantages;

1. Easy to upload and view information of missing people.

2. Have simple GUI.
3. Easy to report in case user come across a missing person from the application.
4. User friendly.
CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY
3.1 INTRODUCTION
Methodology is undertaken to describe how each research objective for this study will be
fulfilled. The research method that is to be adopted and the analysis of the data collected.it also
provides the details of the system analysis, system requirements such as hardware and software
requirements and specifications.

3.2TARGET POPULATION
This application targets the public so as to create alert for missing person but especially those
who have lost their loved ones and are looking for them. The application is also useful to the
police for their investigations during the search for the missing persons.

3.3SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY

This objective of mobile application development will be achieved using the rapid application
development (RAD) of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). A mobile application with
a robust web backend was identified as a solution to the existing gaps.

The SDLC is a series of well-defined, structured stages in software engineering used to develop a
software product. It provides a series of steps that should be followed to design and develop a
software product efficiently. There are different types of SDLC frameworks designed to suit
certain scenarios. This study will use the RAD model of software development.

The RAD model is designed to be flexible to changes and accept new inputs, like features and
functions, at every step of the development process.This study prefers this model because it
provides the opportunity to assess the direction of the project throughout the entire lifecycle.

RAD methodology has three main phases that engage both the users and analysts in the
assessment, design and implementation. These phases include;
1. Requirement planning- identifies the objectives and information requirement
for the proposed system.
2. RAD design workshop-During this phase, users respond to actual working prototypes and
analysts refine designed modules based on user responses.
3. Implementation phase-the new systems are introduced to the users.
The following are the reason why I picked to go with RAD methodology rather than the others;
1. RAD is adaptable and flexible to changes.
2. It can be used to develop systems in a short span of time.
3. There is possibility of lesser defects because of the prototyping nature.
4. Each phase in RAD delivers highest priority functionality to clients.
5. RAD methodology increases reusability of components and encourages user feedback
which is important in the proposed system

3.4SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
3.4.1Software requirements
Windows 7 and above

Android Studio

React-Native, Java, Python

3.4.2Hardware requirement
RAM: 4 GB Hard disk: 80GB

Processor of at least 2.6 GHZ clock speed

Device: GPRS enabled Mobile Phone with Android OS

I.
References
Agile Methodology. (2017). The Agile Movement. Retrieved February, 11, 2017 from
http://agilemethodology.org/

Au, V. (2014). Mobile Monitoring Metrics that Matter for Reliability. Retrieved from
https://www.pagerduty.com/blog

Barber, H. (2016). The Amber Behind Amber Alert Still Waiting for Justice 20 Years

Later. Retrieved from http://www.nbcnews.com/

Chacha, G. (2015). What to expect when you report a missing person. Retrieved

January 29, 2017 from http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/

Chacha, G. (2015). What to expect when you report a missing person. Retrieved

January 29, 2017 from http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/

Acharya, M. (2005). Amateur Radio, A potential tool in emergency operations. 1st ed. New Delhi: A.P.H.
Publishing Corporation.

Clothier, J. (2005). Dutch trial SMS disaster alert system. CNN International, [Online]. 1, 2.

Available at:http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/11/09/dutch.disaster.warning/index.html

Damon, P. (2006). Introduction to International Disaster Management. 1st ed. London:

Butterworth-Heinemann.
APPENDIX 1
TIME SCHEDULE OF THE PROJECT
Ghant chart
ACTIVITIES Week Week Week Week Week Week Week Week Week Week
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Project
Proposal

System
Development
System
Design
System coding
and
Implementation
Testing

Documentation
APPENDIX 2
BUDGET OF THE STUDY
ITEM COST(KSH)

Internet use 2,000

Stationery 1,500

Other expenses 1,500

Total 5,000