CommunCare

Report infrastructural and civic issues with a geo-tagged photo, then track them from submission to fix built for citizens and municipal reviewers alike.

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Inspiration

We've seen it firsthand near our hometown with potholes, broken pipes, damaged roads that just sit there for months, sometimes years. Not because no one notices, but because there's no real way to report them. Most people don't even know who to call. And when someone does complain, it usually just disappears into nothing - no tracking, no follow-up, no accountability.

I wanted to fix that. Give people a simple way to report an issue with actual proof - a photo, a location and give local authorities a real system to see it, act on it, and be held to it. Not another complaint that goes nowhere.

What it does

Citizens (mobile app):

  • Take a geo-tagged photo of an issue (pothole, pipe leak, waste, gutter, etc.)
  • Submit with category + description → get a reference number
  • Track status: Pending → Under Review → Resolved

Municipal staff (web dashboard):

  • View incoming reports with photo + location
  • Approve and mark resolved

A closed loop — reports don't disappear.

How we built it

  • App: Flutter + ''image_picker''(camera) + geolocator (GPS)
  • Backend: Supabase — PostgreSQL, Auth, Storage, all free-tier
  • Dashboard: Web interface reading the same Supabase database in real time

Challenges we ran into

  • First-ever Flutter/mobile build — setting up Android Studio, Gradle, and an emulator from scratch
  • Repeated device-connection errors from limited local machine resources
  • Designing a schema linking reports to users via foreign keys, with Row Level Security in mind

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Zero Flutter experience to a full working app in days
  • A real end-to-end loop: photo + GPS → database → municipal review → status update
  • Real Supabase authentication, not a stubbed login
  • Entirely free-tier stack — realistic for actual local government adoption

What we learned

  • Building multi-screen Flutter apps with real device features (camera, GPS)
  • Designing and connecting a relational database to a mobile frontend
  • Debugging mobile build tooling (Gradle, Android SDK, emulators)
  • Designing for two very different users at once — citizen and official

What's next

  • Public accountability metrics on how fast local authorities resolve issues
  • Duplicate-report detection and push notifications
  • AI photo classification to auto-suggest categories
  • Expanding beyond our hometown pilot to other underserved municipalities

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