Inspiration
During natural disasters, evacuation can take a lot of time, as first responders need to go door to door to make sure everyone in an affected area has left. We want to optimize and provide better insight into the evacuation experience to aid homeowners, first responders, and those interested in learning from previous evacuations.
What it does
EvacuTech works with users from all walks of life and rescue jobs. From the web interface to the mobile interface, it seeks to encompass the most amount of people possible while still keeping it as open as possible. Most importantly, it addresses human mobility in times of danger.
As a short form solution, it allows rescue personnel the ability to broadcast messages immediately to users, informing them of dangers ahead--before it's too late. It also allows homeowners to take control of their evacuation, and help out rescue personnel by reporting their evacuation, and the people they're taking with them. With this, rescue personnel can determine which houses must be knocked on, and which don't, thus improving their response rate. Tourists aren't left behind either, the best part of the application is that it tells you how you need to react to get somewhere safely without even needing a login. Which by the way, the login is a formality for families to make it easier for others to be updated on family movement, without needing to clog emergency lines.
As an intermediary solution, it promotes the communication of information. We receive weather and other forms of alerts in varying frequencies, but often, the simple message does little more than alert us--especially when there's more to be known about it. This app (like a few others) seeks to improve app-user's understanding of the natural events occurring around them, and inform them of ways they can prepare themselves for the future.
Finally, as a long term solution, it does away with the age-old problem of repetitive history by providing knowledge access.By providing an API usable by developers seeks to promote research on human mobility, this project seeks to inspire future solutions for the betterment of humanity and the community.
How we built it
We built EvacuTech with two client-side applications, a web-app (written in react) and an android app. We used a GraphQL backend service as our api which interfaced with a mongodb cluster for data storage.
Challenges we ran into
Hosting took up a large amount time, and none of us had used GraphQL before, so there were a lot of challenges setting that all up.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We got a decent graphql api running, and the client side of a mobile and web app, which feels great!
What we learned
A lot about GraphQl. Hosting services. Android Development.
What's next for EvacuTech
Fully connecting our clients with our api, and providing more advanced querying options for those looking to decipher evacuation data.
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