Crisis Companion

Crisis Companion is an app to ensure that each unique user is prepared for a medical or natural disaster. We plan for safety, not disaster.

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Inspiration

Our team saw the amount of casualties due to natural disasters and medical emergencies each year. After further research, we discovered that over half of all Americans do not have a plan for these types of situations other than to wait for a first responder. However, the time it takes for a first responder to arrive is critical in an emergency. In this period, a person in a disaster must know how to react and what steps are suitable for them to keep them safe. Crisis Companion was built to help people be aware and ready in the event of an unexpected scenario.

What it does

Crisis Companion contains information on medical emergencies and natural disasters, and also has a safety planner unique to the user’s account that assists with natural disasters, and safety checklists. These are all to ensure that the user is able to be prepared for a variety of emergencies and has a plan ready in case one was to occur. Along with general step-by-step actions that we recommend for each situation, we included a customizable planner. This is for the user to be able to make a plan which is relevant to their conditions. For example, the user may have a certain room that is sturdy with no windows and safe to use in the event of a tornado. In the planner, the user can have their plan say exactly where that room is and how to get there. To maintain the integrity of each person’s individuality, we included a login/sign-up system. This makes sure that different people can create plans and prepare in a way that works for them.

How we built it

We built Crisis Companion using and programmed all of the app’s blocks within MAI. Along with MIT App Inventor. Along with MIT App Inventor, we used an external source financed by Google called Firebase. We utilized Firebase to create a login/signup system so that the user can have an account unique to themselves.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge we ran into was having an error in the app. When we had an error in the app, we would have to rewrite code that took a long time to debug. Then, we would have to endure the trial and error process and sometimes the emulator would glitch out on us and we had to redownload the emulator several times. Another huge challenge that we faced was finding good ideas for our app’s video. This challenge really enacted our inner creativity and helped us create a great and detailed video that displays all the necessary information of our app. All in all, overcoming these challenges led to the success of Crisis Companion and its video.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Crisis Companion has a lot of really great components that we worked hard on. For us, having customizable plans and checklists are really important. However, the biggest accomplishment was definitely coding our Firebase database. This aspect was important to us because it allowed for each user to have their own information stored in a database and accessible to them through their account. Being able to link a user’s account to their personal information took a lot of hard work and also some difficulty, but in the end, it really paid off.

What we learned

Developing Crisis Companion taught us a lot of things. We learned a lot about the problems regarding preparation and natural disasters and medical emergencies. Our team also had to learn a lot about block coding through MIT App Inventor and also database coding with Google Firebase. Through all of this, we gained a lot of experience in problem solving and also in communication. The biggest thing that we took away from all of this was that there are many different problems and many different ways to solve them. The best way to solve these problems is to base our solution partly upon what is best for us as developers and mostly on what is best for our users.

What's next for Crisis Companion

We will reach out to safety and health and environmental science departments so that we can continue our research. Along with this, we will be contacting the departments to also try and implement it and observe real life applications of our app. We hope that our app is successful in helping more people by saving lives and that we can spread Crisis Companion so that a lot of people can use it.

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