Inspiration
We already have satellites, maps, and alerts. What we do not have is a decision for one house. The flooding in Nepal made that gap feel urgent, so we stopped building a dashboard and started building a call.
What it does
Highground watches a flood, house by house. It finds who is about to go under, calls them, and gives one walk to dry ground. If they never leave, it sends rescue. In cities that call goes to a phone. In rural places with no cell, Starlink carries it.
How we built it
Highground is a Leaflet map on real elevation. Chalk joins rain, flood history, and ground height, then decides call or rescue. Cities is New York on the phone network. Rural is Kentucky, where Starlink carries the call. The white line is the walk to dry ground, locked the first time we give it.
Challenges we ran into
Starlink as a New York backup was the wrong story, so we split city and rural. The path kept jumping with the forecast, which is useless as an instruction, so we freeze it. Chalk’s hosted branch had no environment to deploy, so the demo runs the same features locally.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The walk to dry ground does not change after we give it. We had it recalculating every tick and it looked insane, so we lock the destination. Rescue does not wait until everyone has left. The people who never moved still get a team, and they are the last ones counted. We also dropped Starlink as a New York backup. That was a stretch. It belongs in Kentucky, where the phones already do not work.
What we learned
A forecast is not a plan. If the dry-ground path keeps moving, nobody can follow it. We also learned not to force SpaceX into the city story. Weather is NOAA. Starlink only matters where there is no cell. And the people who never leave have to be last, or the demo is lying about who this is for.
What's next for HighGround
New York and Kentucky are the proof. Next we take this to the places that need it most: flood-prone cities and rural valleys where the warning still does not land, including places like Nepal. Same idea. Find the house, give the walk, send help if they stay. Get the live satellite rain in, and get Starlink into the hollows that have no cell.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.