Inspiration
In a day and age where communities perpetuate social stigmas, those who are in need of assistance often do not seek the help they need. Whether this is in relation to needing a temporary shelter, a safe place, or just help during a crisis, individuals often struggle to find adequate hosting locations to support themselves. As an issue, our entire group felt deserved more attention, we embarked on a mission to help bring aid to those in need of a safe oasis.
What It Does
Based on data provided by host locations and comparing it to requirements provided by a user, the application uses geolocation and an algorithm to determine the best location the user should go to; varying from shelters to food banks to institutions in the area.
How We Built It
The backend is a self-hosted database constructed almost entirely from Python, we used the Leaflet API to generate a map of near the user's geolocation, we included a sample database of some food banks, homeless shelters, and institutions in Toronto and the GTA, we used Mapbox to display the images of our map; all put together with flask and some javascript.
Challenges We Ran Into
It was difficult to learn how to integrate APIs into our hack and found that certain API keys require special (monetary) access to customer support so many alterations had to be made to our hack. We also discovered that not all APIs are compatible with all code and that changing APIs or adjusting your code is sometimes necessary to create an effectively working product. It was also a unique experience developing our own backend server using SQL, as well as using a non-traditional map API integration
What We Learned
Aside from simply learning how to integrate different APIs and structure our code, we also learned a fair bit about project management and working together cooperatively as a team in order to maximize our efficiency.
What's Next For oAIDsis
Features we toyed with:
- mapping and routing
- more advanced algorithms
- factors of influence such as language, age, demographic, ethnicity;
- account creation so users can continuously use the service
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.