Prep | Devpost

Introduction

Prep is a cross-platform app that ensures your family will be prepared in case of a natural disaster. It keeps track of weather alerts in your area, guides you through packing an supply kit, maps your surroundings, and makes contacting your family a breeze. By providing tips and reminders long before disaster strikes, Prep deters panic and other adverse effects during the inevitable.

Inspiration

In 2015, a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) survey found that:

nearly 60 percent of American adults have not practiced what to do in a disaster by participating in a disaster drill or preparedness exercise at work, school, or home in the past year. Further, only 39 percent of respondents have developed an emergency plan and discussed it with their household.

As if this weren't dangerous enough, the Washington Post reported that 80 percent of Americans had been living in counties with weather-related disasters for the eight years leading up to the study.

Prerequisites for using the app

All you need is an iPhone!

Installing

Download the app at this link. Click through on your phone to a direct download!

What it does

Disaster prep checklist: Stock up on everything you'll need in case of an emergency with our interactive list.
Live weather updates: Powered by OpenWeather API, Prep checks the temperature, wind speed, and inclement weather warnings in your area.
Stay connected: If you get separated, Prep allows you to contact your family members and arrange a rendezvous point.

How we built it

Thunkable - Cross-platform app development framework
OpenWeatherMap - Location-based weather data
Google Maps Platform - Managed location data

Challenges we ran into

We were all new to this kind of development, and this was the first hackathon for every member of our team! The majority of us are very new to CS, so we had some trouble choosing the tools we should use and then creating the scaffolding to integrate said tools. In particular, we ran into a lot of trouble with the Twilio API, so we ended up not incorporating it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're super excited that our original idea is now a working model. We actually built something that pulls in real location and weather data — and there's an cool checklist! We think an app like this could save lives in natural disasters by making sure families are stocked up with enough supplies to survive until first responders arrive. Our app encourages having a solid plan in place for any disaster situation.

What we learned

How to use APIs
App design and development
Integrate different open source solutions into one complete project
Working as a team: splitting up tasks, communicating...
How to use new tools: Slack, Thunkable, Google Cloud, and even Twilio (though we didn't end up using it.)

What's next for Prep

We would love to continue fleshing out the app's functionality. It would be amazing to get it to a level of production where it serve people in their daily lives. We'd also love to power through and develop that Twilio functionality, despite every error message. The app supposedly works in Android, but we didn't had enough time to test that out — so we'd love to confirm that when we get the chance!