Inspiration
Frustrated by discovering local emergencies too late. Wanted instant, hyper-local alerts for things like road closures, power outages, and safety hazards.
What it does
Real-time backend that lets users report local incidents and instantly alerts only nearby people via WebSocket. REST API for integration. Think "digital neighborhood watch.
How we built it
Rust + Actix Web 4.0
WebSocket for real-time alerts
In-memory storage with DashMap
Custom geospatial distance calculations
Async/await throughout
Challenges we ran into
WebSocket session management across threads
Geospatial filtering performance
Race conditions in concurrent data access
Type system complexities in Rust
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Sub-second alert delivery
Zero unsafe Rust code
Both WebSocket + REST APIs working
No database dependency
Clean, maintainable architecture
What we learned
Rust's ownership model prevents entire classes of bugs Actix Web's actor system for WebSocket management Spatial indexing techniques Real-time system design patterns
What's next for Community Alert
User authentication (JWT) Incident verification (crowd-sourced) Database persistence Mobile app frontend Admin dashboard Deployment to cloud


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