Icy Insights

Snow Plow
favourite paths + history
signup
signin
favourite and past routes
sample path
risk insights

Inspiration

We were inspired by our commute to ElleHacks. During the winter, the last thing you want to be is a car deep in fresh snow! We aim to prevent that.

What it does

Icy Insights takes a user's origin and destination for their commute and displays the safest route for their winter commute -- the route where the most snow has been plowed. This helps drivers stay informed about their commute conditions during Winter.

How we built it

We built Icy Insights using a combination of React and the MUI Component Library for the frontend to create a dynamic and responsive user interface, and Node.js for the backend to handle routing and API requests. For mapping functionality, we integrated the Google Maps API to display maps and routes. The core feature of our application, identifying the safest routes, was developed by leveraging city and live snow plow data to assess road conditions and plow coverage. We processed this data using algorithms designed to evaluate route safety based on data such as snow clearance levels and high-risk intersections to recommend the most suitable path for commuting during winter conditions.

Challenges we ran into

Throughout the development of Icy Insights, we deepened our understanding of geospatial data processing and the complexities involved in working with real-time data. As a team, we enhanced our skills in using the Google Maps API, not only for basic mapping features but also for implementing route evaluation from external data resources.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are particularly proud of creating an application that can address a real-world problem. The ability to integrate multiple APIs and present users with actionable insights is an achievement we're super proud of. Additionally, overcoming the technical challenges and learning to work effectively as a team under the pressure of a hackathon deadline has been incredibly rewarding.

What we learned

We learned that calculating the distance between two points on the globe is difficult and requires a lot of math. Furthermore, we learned how to use of Google Maps APIs, through our various application use cases. We also were not very familiar with React component libraries on the frontend side, and one of us learned git throughout the 3 days