Hurricane-GIS (Geographical Information System)

Users can view reports on the shared map.
Creating a pin.
Address search for efficient navigation.
Login page. Users must create an account to create pins.
About section.

Inspiration

HurricaneGIS was born out of our experiences during hurricane season here in Florida. After a recent storm hit our area, we wanted to create an easy way for people to report what they were seeing. So, we built this app to help people connect and stay informed during these challenging events.

What it does

HurricaneGIS gives users access to a global map, that has pins on it created by other people. These pins represent incidents related to natural disasters (i.e. debris, flooding, broken powerlines, crashed cars). HurricaneGIS provides people with real-time updates about surrounding areas during these events using the pins created by locals.

Viewing pins on the map - Clicking on pins displays the incident report, containing the incident type, description, and location. Also storing the user meta data of who made the report
Adding pins - Users can add pins by clicking on the map.
User authentication - Users can not add pins if they are not registered on the site. Only until they register or log in are they able to do so.
Address search - Users can type in an address in the search bar to zoom in on the location. This makes it easy to navigate to locations far away on the map.

How we built it

Back-end: MongoDB, Node.js, Express.js, Google Cloud
Front-end: Google Maps API, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, SASS

We built HurricaneGIS by first using the Google Maps API to add the map interface to the website. The UI was created using base HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with the API to get information about where the user adds a pin on the map, and we used to create a form for the incident report.

We stored the coordinates and incident report input using MongoDB and hosted it on a Google Cloud server so pins would be shared between users. We added user authentication using Express.js, making it so that only registered users could create pins. However, any guest would still be able to view the map even if not logged in.

Challenges we ran into

The most significant challenge we had was learning version control and collaboration using Git. This was our first hackathon, and our first time programming within a team so the workflow was a learning curve. As a team, we encountered numerous issues with merging files, which often led to confusion and setbacks. There were times when we didn’t make enough commits, resulting in lost code when we pulled or merged our work incorrectly. We were able to overcome these difficulties through extensive communication with each other about what changes we were working on, and what to merge and when.

Built With

Submitted to

Knight Hacks VII

Created by

I worked mainly on the back end for HurricaneGIS. It was my first time using MongoDB, and it was tough to get the hang of at first, but once I figured it out, it was super satisfying. I set up the database to store all the user-reported incidents, like location, issue type, and descriptions, and connected it to the form submissions and map updates.

Dylan McIntee
I worked mainly on the back end and implementing google maps API and cloud into our project. I also made the login and registration logic / setup. It was my first time working on any sort of backend and MongoDB was a lot to get up to speed with, after getting it set up and testing it with Postman everything was working perfectly.

J. Gabriel Connolly
I built and styled the front-end of the website using HTML, CSS with SASS, and JavaScript. It was my first hackathon and I really enjoyed learning how to work with APIs and designing all the UI for the app.

Aden Thompson

Updates

J. Gabriel Connolly started this project — Oct 06, 2024 02:15 AM EDT

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