PopuLow

PopuLow app logo
C5 Alliance Group logo
Main app screen
Hotspot notifications

Inspiration

The PopuLow app helps individuals perform social distancing effectively. This is designed to reduce health risk for the app's user, its household and others. PopuLow is therefore primed to both help #FlattenTheCurve and also to help users maintain social distancing for a longer period, as the situation may require. Furthermore, since it increases the certainty of when a user has to leave their home and where they choose to go, it can help reduce anxiety levels and therefore contribute to improved mental health.

What it does

PopuLow App offers a reliable and user-friendly way of promoting social distancing by providing a real-time ‘people hot-spot’ map interface.
Users register anonymously and set up geo-fences for their work and home addresses. Activity outside of a user’s geo-fence is tracked, monitored and displayed to all community users.
Users can then make informed decisions on where to shop or exercise and when the best time is to leave the home. Outside the geo-fence locations, users will be notified through push messages of potential hot-spots nearby. These measures will help lead to the slower spread of COVID-19 by minimising people interactions

How I built it

Populow is built on the proven technology stack of Xamarin Forms (for Android and iOS devices), Azure serverless architecture (Functions) and SQL Azure database built using Geospatial datatypes for hot spot calculations. The key aim was to respect user privacy and gain trust, so having a no login / easy opt out system was essential.

Challenges I ran into

Numerous challenges presented themselves to the team, from continuous background running of the apps in a battery friendly way, through to the best and safest way to calculate hotspot densities and safety buffers, all whilst dealing with the usual ebbs and flows of a project

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Our biggest achievement has been the initial concept to PoC that we achieved over the weekend. Not only would this have been an achievement in normal hackathon, this was conducted entirely remotely, from brainstorming to video production.

What's next for PopuLow

Aside from funding and the formal submission and approval of the applications on the Apple App and Google Play stores, our project is ready to go live. However, whilst our current solution is scalable for the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, it is our view that the following would need to be in place for a true pan EU solution:

Enhancements to the mobile app for multiple languages
Further testing across a greater range of devices
Upgraded architecture from Serverless Functions to an IoT hub design
Azure credit / consumption support to run at scale
Further development to allow for additional use cases such as shopping queue information, tourist location information and other location based messaging