Fighting Disasters

Inspiration

Being Inspired from the current Corona Virus Pandemic and from difficulties such as shortage of items such as ventilators in most parts of the world, I started thinking "what if there are people with this ventilators that do not even know who needs them nor have access to this people that needs them?". When I look around and I see poor families struggling to feed their children because they are out of school, I see people in need of help. As A software Engineer and an Innovator, I have always wanted to venture into creating a solution that can directly affect the lives of humanity and is not for profit making. I saw an opportunity when I learned about this Hackerthon three days ago.

What it does

Fighting Disasters is a web and mobile application developed to help people and communities of all types affected by Disasters. On Fighting Disasters, Disasters such as pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, wars etc around the globe are proposed to the system. The Disaster goes through a verification and correction process and at the end, it is either removed or added to the system. Our support from time to time, update the status and other information of the disaster. If a disaster is approved, it is then listed on our platform and the public can read about this disaster and above all, people/communities affected by this disaster can create what I call Listings. A listing is simply an entity that needs donations and every listing is attached to at least one Disaster. To register a listing, a very sensitive and detailed form is submitted to our sytem. After everything is verified about the listing, the support can edit the listing, rejects or approves it. When it is approved, it can then appear on the application. People visiting our application can donate directly to a listing or donate through us. In case of direct donations, donors can only donate from the list of needs of a listing. Needs can be cash, materials, equipment etc. One listing can have as many needs as added by the creator. In time of donation, the donor must donate from the list of needs and can donate any amount of items needed by that listing. In case the donor is donating materials, we sent information automatically to the email/phone of the Donor and Listing. We followup with the donor and listing to make sure the materials are delivered. In case of cash donations using our numerous payment methods, we deliver this cash to the listing as soon as possible. In cases when the donor donates through us, we select a critical listing and hand the donation too . All the information related to who, how and why we did the donation to that particular individual is accurately communicated with the donor. On our platform, People, Institutions, governments etc can add themselves as donors. When a listing is created, we run a machine learning Algorithm to know who to send a notification. We give the possibility for potential donors to add themselves to our mailing list to get notified when a listing is added.

How I built it

The application is build using the Web services software Architecture. At the Back-end, I have developed an API using Yii2. This API basically handles all the logic of the application and communicates with the Database, Mobile and Web Applications. The API is complete, I am using React with Materialize Bootstraps for the design of the web Application. For the Mobile, I am building a cross platform Mobile Application for both IOS and Android using React Native.

Challenges I ran into

Time Management. Managing my Job and developing this application the way I want and on time to help in the current Corona Virus is a serious issue. I had to battle with displaying donations of a particular listing. It was a very tricky task.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Solving the donations issue. Coming up a project to help humanity is priceless.

What I learned

More about disasters, More about Corona Virus and advanced knowledge of how to use Data Tables in MDBreact.

What's next for Fighting Disasters

At this point, 80% of the web application is working and I need to complete it. I Just started the Mobile Application and it is just about 20% gone. hosting of the application is also very important I need to test this application and deploy for use because I believe we can safe lives and help people.