BEFORE AND AFTER

Inspiration

A recent Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) survey found that nearly 60 percent of American adults have not practiced what to do in a disaster by participating in a disaster drill or preparedness exercise at work, school, or home in the past year. Further, only 39 percent of respondents have developed an emergency plan and discussed it with their household. This is despite the fact that 80 percent of Americans live in counties that have been hit with a weather-related disaster since 2007, as reported by the Washington Post. With nearly** 61% of _ Americans having not prepared a emergency plan in case of a widespread emergency in their local area and **no basic technologies present to sufficiently provide information to local authorities to provide help to one another, I felt the need to develop this app in order to build a tool for both, the average household and authorities , in order for local authorities to better plan, better make decisions and provide knowledgable information in order to save lives. _ Additionally, I have been personally affected by a similar situation, providing me better insight regarding the experience.

What it does

There are three main components of the app. These components help the user learn how to prepare for natural disasters, provide a feed of visual and statistical updates from the national weather association and provide a location tracking system to let others around you know if you are in trouble and also sending this data to the backend where it is stored and local authorities would be able to access It to help find you and save you in a time of distress.

The first part is the NWS feed where we have a visualization of the United States and the current weather reports for various regions. We are able to see the various reports and visual charts and graphs representing this data at our current location.

The second part is the location tracking system. Here we have a map UI where we see our current location being displayed on the map. Our location is automatically sent to the backend and it updated in realtime. Here we see my location down in Michigan. If I go ahead and press alert, the app will put my location in alert status. This means all users around me in a 10 mile radius will be able to see that I am in trouble and will be able to help me. Additionally, this alert status is sent to the backend where local authorities see that you need help and have access to your exact location. This navigation-precise location data can also be used for determining actions such as entering a house on fire. For example, if the firefighters don't know whether someone is still inside the house or not they can simply view the app and see whether they are in or outside of the house.

The last tab is the resources tab where there are a plethora of resources for various natural and unexpected disasters which users can use in order to be prepared and aware of how to tackle such situations.

How I built it

I built the application using react-native and expo sdk. I also created the location tracking system using a a Firebase, geolocation and geofencing to alert other users around them. I user the NWS api to provide their UI and for the resources tab I created it and applied the resources I found.