Shooting Shield

Helps people prepare for, survive, and recover from mass shootings.

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Inspiration

In the wake of the recent tragedy in Las Vegas, we felt the need to put technology to work protecting people.

What it does

Shooting Shield is designed to prepare people before mass shootings, help them survive during shootings, and recover afterward. Here's how:

Prepare

Users can take preemptive action to keep themselves safe and communicate with loved ones in case they're involved in a shooting. They can:

  1. Set emergency contacts for quick communication during a crisis.
  2. Set their own important medical information, such as blood type and special treatment instructions, to be displayed on the lock screen.
  3. Access a bevy of knowledge on preventing and staying safe during mass shootings, in order to create an Emergency Action Plan.

Survive

If caught in a shooting, Shooter Shield can be life saving. Once they've gotten to cover, the user can use Shooter Shield to:

  1. Send an SOS - A press of a button queues up 911 on the user's phone. The application tells the user what information is useful to the police. Another press sends a message to the user's emergency contacts, with status (Safe, In Danger, or Injured) and attached GPS coordinates.
  2. Review survival tips & first aid procedures - The user can quickly review advice for what to do during a shooting, and access first aid information for common gunfire-caused injuries.
  3. See a map with key information such as their friends' locations, police and paramedic locations, and routes to the nearest hospital
  4. Get alerts on the situation as they happen.

Recover

After the user or someone they care about is caught in a shooting, Shooter Shield has resources they can use to recover emotionally and financially, and take action on preventing future shootings. Users can:

  1. Connect with other survivors via support groups like The Rebels Project.
  2. Learn about treatment of common post-trauma disorders such as PTSD and Survivor Syndrome, and find local therapists.
  3. Take advantage of financial resources such as the Crime Victim's Fund and learn their rights on insurance and job security.
  4. Research the history of mass shootings, gun laws at the federal and state level, and contact their local congresspeople.

How we built it

We initially aimed at a React Native app utilizing Expo to create an app capable of running on both Android and iOS. Unfortunately, after multiple technical difficulties, we ended up creating a simple screen-jumping prototype in Invision.

Challenges we ran into

See above.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Bringing together the plentiful but widely scattered resources available to shooting victims, and hopefully saving lives.

What we learned

Building apps in such a short time frame can be quite frustrating. Familiarizing ourselves better with the languages of app construction would have been wise. Also, bring warm socks and blankets because some hackathons set their thermostats to 'arctic chill.'

What's next for Shooting Shield

We'd love to build a fully functioning app with complete access to the resources our research turned up. Our next steps would include:

  1. Talk to victims, experts, and advocacy groups to ensure our user needs analysis is on point and that we're getting the right resources to the people that need them.
  2. Incorporate WRLD's mapping technology to give users accurate, data-rich maps of their environments during a shooting.
  3. Use Google's machine learning APIs to identify police, paramedics, user's friends, and shooters from available video broadcasts.

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