A Systematic Review of Computer Science Solutions for Addressing Violence Against Women and Children

Violence against women and children is a public health issue of pandemic proportions. It is estimated that one in every three women worldwide has experienced physical, emotional, or sexual violence. Similarly, each year one out of two children are victims of some form of violence including domestic aggression and bullying. Due to the widespread use of the Internet and social media, women and children are now vulnerable to other types of violence such as cyber-bullying and online sexual or emotional harassment. To help alleviate this social problem, the use of computer science and related technologies has been leveraged in recent years. The Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, ubiquitous and mobile computing, pattern recognition, cloud computing and similar technologies, have been used to formulate solutions to detect and prevent violent acts against women and children. In this paper, a systematic review of some of the efforts that can help address the problem of violence against women and children is presented. This paper describes the current state-of-the-art of these contributions and identifies trends, architectures, technologies, and current open challenges. The survey was developed using a literature review of academic documents published from 2010 to 2020. The contributions were categorized into four application domains: online detection, offline detection, safety, and education. These contributions were further categorized based on the computer science approaches and technologies used: artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and digital serious games.