Boston Diverse Sustainability Map

Our project maps food banks and food resources in Greater Boston, helping people find nearby help and communities to see where food are supported using public and realtime data.

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Inspiration

This project is inspired by food insecurity and uneqal access to food resources across the Greater Boston area, and the need for a clearer, centralized way to get information about where food is available.

What it does

It maps food banks and food resources across Greater Boston so people can quickly find food nearby and communities can see where support is missing.

How we built it

We used public data that is available to us for this time from Boston Public Data and Google Places API for food distributors, then exporting the results as JSON in a clean and standardized data, and thus then displaying it on an interactive map with layers for different resources types.

Challenges we ran into

Data was a challenge we faced as many of the data were not publicly available to us. Another challenge we faced was implementing the Gemini API to generate real time updates and review about that location on the map based on various sites or location's update

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We created a clear, ethical, and easy to use map using only public data, while keep privacy, fairness, and accessibility at the center of the project.

What we learned

We learned how to search for, clean, and standardize JSON data, and connect raw open data to an interactive map in a reliable and maintainable way.

What's next for Boston Diverse Sustainability Map

Next, we plan to improve the data accuracy by verifying location and filling in missing resources, add multilingual and accessibility features, and expand the map to include more sustainability indicators. We also plan to implement a built-in path tracking function to navigate users to their destination. Filters for prices/review/rating could also be implemented to suit user's references.

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