Combating Domestic Violence during COVID-19 Pandemic in Bangladesh: Using a Mobile Application integrated with an Effective Solution

ABSTRACT

Domestic violence (DV) is not new. Yet, researchers and human rights experts are reporting an alarming rise in DV against women since countries began locking down areas to stop the virus from spreading. They are now calling for a way to assist victims without risking infection of the virus. This paper proposes a mobile application that addresses DV in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It consists of two interconnected components-the Women's Support Division (WSD) and Conversational Interactive Response (CIR). The CIR module is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) chatbot for answering questions. One of the sub-modules, the Action Key module sends notifications with GPS location to acquaintances. It was found to have a performance time of 8.64 milliseconds which ensures the proposed system transmits data faster than other systems. The system usability scale (SUS) result of our proposed application has an average 66.71% score which indicates the system is fit for use. Finally, data for DV in Bangladesh is analyzed from 2014 to April 2020. Most applications addressed violence against women who are outdoors. Few have focused on DV, which is increasing indoors during the COVID-19 pandemic.