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Home Page
Inspiration
Daniel bikes a lot, so when he heard of the accessibility track, he thought about some kind of app that showed you the most bike-accessible routes from point a to b. This idea was a little limited in scope. After a bit of brainstorming, we decided that the project should involve the accessibility of various services and community resources, like parks, hospitals, community centers and grocery stores. Accessibility would largely be measured by the ability to reach the location by public transit. Our goal with this idea was to determine where critical infrastructure and the means to get there is lacking, particularly in underserved communities and neighborhoods. We also wanted to provide a forum space where people could discuss their experiences regarding the accessibility of various key public places and services.
What it does
The home page of civic compass leads you to a page with a map containing various pins marking important services. By clicking on a service, one can view its accessibility, its importance to the local region (eg, a grocery store in a food desert would be more valuable than one with plenty of options*) and its total service score, a measurement of how helpful a service is given its criticality and accessibility. The user can log in with Auth0, where they can post comments relating to services that they know about, informing the general community about their experiences. Comments are available to read without an account, but posting must be authenticated.
How we built it
We used a react frontend with a flask backend. We used MongoDB and various (4?) publicly available datasets relating to Pittsburgh. MongoDB stores the locations of the services we looked at, as well as its various attributes (distance to bike racks, bus stops, median income in neighborhood). When a user clicks on a pin, the frontend queries the backend for its information, and then renders the relevant data. Auth0 is incorporated for authentication, and user comments are also inserted into MongoDB, for data persistence.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into some CORS related issues when trying to retrieve data from the backend. We also had some trouble initially finding data sets that would parse properly into the MongoDB database collections.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We both were proud to create a working full stack application with a working database since the previous year we really only made a simple front-end app.
What we learned
We both got to learn about MongoDB Atlas, specifically how to use it, Compass, setting up users, databases, clusters, and collections, and how to integrate it into the back-end.
What's next for Civic Compass
We would like to add more data points for other public services. Furthermore, we like to add more functionality and incentives for people to sign in with an account and leave comments.
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