Covid Hotspot Map

To help you avoid all of the hotspots.

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Inspiration

One of our biggest inspirations behind this project was to bring awareness to the rising COVID cases in our local area of Staten Island. As the COVID cases grow in number, so do the hospitalizations, and sadly, the death toll. As a team, we are interested in helping users by providing them with an informative and comfortable experience to help them be more responsible while ensuring they don’t feel overwhelmed or stressed.

What it does

Our program generates heat maps showing the high-risk areas of Staten Island. We have also integrated a chatbot named Nurse Joy, who offers you the ability to take a questionnaire going over your symptoms. If you feel like you need to get tested for COVID after chatting with Nurse Joy, we also offer a list of available COVID testing sites on Staten Island.

How We built it

We built our project using a Staten Island map and cutting out each segment by zip code. By separating the map of Staten Island into elements via zip codes, the overwhelming data is made more concise for users. The acquired information is obtained via NYC HEALTH which is updated as it is received. For the chatbot feature, using Facebook Development and Chatfuel Messenger bot environment, we programmed a simple block diagram to create a chatbot that was easily accessible for users via their social media and behaved in a somewhat human capacity.

Challenges We ran into

Our biggest challenge had to be that we were unfamiliar with not only learning the language but also operating within a new IDE. For the two of us, this was our first time working with Visual Studio in C#. Another challenge we faced was creating the chatbot. We couldn’t incorporate the Facebook Messenger API directly into our program since we did not have a web host; therefore, we elected to hyperlink the Facebook page for Nurse Joy into our program instead.

Group Accomplishments

Considering how new we were to C#, we implemented a working heat map that would receive updates through a website into a web serviceable program. We were also able to implement a basic chatbot to run alongside our program to offer users an option to help comfort them and discuss their symptoms if they felt compelled to do so.

What We learned

Visual Form editing in C# to make user-accessible programs for graphical applications without having to directly write code. Graphics Programming in C# to show data visually without having to read lines of text. We also learned how to coordinate tasks and work to deliver a set of project goals.

What’s next

If offered the opportunity to expand the heatmap to other areas of New York City, we would take the time to continue the project. With more experience, we could even tackle more significant, more ambitious projects in future Hackathons.

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