CityConnect

Inspiration: Inspiration for CityConnect looks toward building strong resilient communities. Sometimes, very often, people can't even find the local resources, reliable support, or even the timely information that would help people in need of them. CityConnect bridges that gap, empowering people to more easily connect with local resources, events, and support networks while developing a stronger sense of community.

What It Does: CityConnect provides an application that makes the availability of local resources, services, and community support real-time. Such users can be connected with help centers close to them, and emergency services can be accessed; one can even get events going on within the community and join discussions on the state of neighborhoods. The app ensures that the user is well informed and connected to his/her community's daily needs right through to emergency assistance.

How we built it: CityConnect was built in React Native to ensure seamlessness across iOS and Android. We used Expo to create the app. We used many dependencies like react-native-maps and @google/generative-ai. We used Gemini for the chatbot and nativewind for the styling.

Challenges we ran into: One of the big challenges was to create a system that could support real-time dynamic data for multiple communities simultaneously. It became imperative to make sure that resources become updated and accessible without lag. Another important aspect was integrating privacy and security features for the protection of user information. This again is quite a challenging task, more so when sensitive data regarding location or emergency contacts is dealt with.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: We are proud that we could deliver such an app with location services integrated into the real-time community updates, which would make CityConnect a reliable tool for users. Given the simplicity and ease of use of this application, it was a big accomplishment that it would enable quick access to the most important resources. We are proud of its backend resilience, ensuring that no user disruption occurs when he accesses services.

What we learned: We have learned so much while working on this project, like how to handle real-time data, especially with location-based services. We came to understand usability versus functionality in the design when targeting local communities' diverse user needs. Building a scalable solution that may adapt to any community has also taught us much about app architecture and security.

What's next for CityConnect: Soon, the development of the features in CityConnect will go into recommendations via AI, including users' behavior and preferences. We would like to establish partnerships with local organizations to offer better-curated and verified resources, allowing for better functionality of emergency response. We envision building customizable community networks, enabling app users to create groups, plan events, and share resources inside the app so that CityConnect becomes the place to go for involvement in community activities.

Built With

• expo.io
• gemini
• javascript
• nativewind
• react-native