Harimau

ResQ: A simple web-based platform that helps people understand what’s happening and what to do during a disaster

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Inspiration

We created ResQ because we’ve seen how difficult it is to get proper help during disasters. In Malaysia, floods happen almost every year, yet there’s still no official app or system to support people in real-time. Most people rely on WhatsApp or scattered social media posts, which often leads to delays and confusion. This is especially hard for the elderly, those who live alone, or people in rural areas.

Emma, one of our teammates, has an aunt who works in local flood relief. She told us how hard it was to reach out to victims, not because people didn’t want help, but because there was no single place for them to get reliable information or guidance.

That’s what inspired us to build ResQ. Instead of creating a whole new system, we built on top of Korea’s Emergency Ready App, which already sends out disaster alerts. We used it as our proof of concept and focused on improving the experience—making the information more accessible, easier to understand, and available in multiple languages.

What it does

  • ResQ is a simple web-based platform that helps people understand what’s happening and what to do during a disaster. It gives step-by-step instructions, shows nearby shelters, offers safety tips, and includes a smart chatbot that answers urgent questions. It’s designed to work for everyone, especially seniors and foreigners who may struggle with complex apps or language barriers. There’s no need to download anything—just open the website and get help.

How we built it

  • We used HTML, Tailwind and Flask to build the platform, and connected it to real APIs like NewsAPI for scraping news data in Korea regarding disaster, Perplexity for chatbot, translating and summarizing news data.

  • We also utilizes the https://www.safetydata.go.kr/ website to get data on shelters, disaster informations and reports on disasters to be displayed on the map

Challenges we ran into

  • How to utilize the data that the CodeForKorea asked us to do which is the https://www.safetydata.go.kr/ website which the data that was posted on there are hard to parse and extract, while also having limited API options

  • Trying to minimize the API calls for AI which costs money but we did consider in using the Deepseek model which can work locally but it requires a huge amount of size for storage

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Being able to design a UI that not only catered to the elderly but are also simple and are perfect for its targeted audience which is for people who need help and information as fast as possible.

    • Manages to utilize AI in a way that we initially intended where it can help the user and also sorts data to the way that we like.

What we learned

  • The importance of UI and display in conveying information in an accessible and meaningful way especially when we are dealing with disaster information and helping people in which one second can be a life and death situation

  • How AI and technology can be utilized to not only solve simple problems like brainstorming ideas but also can be used to solve humanity needs in dire times

What's next for Harimau

  • To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed solutions not only in Korea but also globally where having timely information in critical moments can help in reducing the tragedies of natural disasters

  • We will create a mobile application of the web app that we created while also developing apps that will help others in other fields like mental health and education

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