RescueHub

Inspiration

In times of natural disaster, communities that are well-connected and prepared are better able to withstand and recover from challenges. RescueHub can draw inspiration from the power of community resilience, aiming to be a reliable tool that connects people with the resources, support, and information they need to stay safe and recover quickly.

What it does

RescueHub is a web app designed to assist people in helping each other during natural disasters and also to support volunteers in aiding those in need. The app offers three main features for the community: a community forum, an evacuation planning map, and a chatbot that answers questions about what to do during a natural disaster. Additionally, RescueHub includes tools for volunteers, allowing them to organize and assign various tasks that arise during a disaster. Since natural disasters are often chaotic, with multiple things happening simultaneously, a task management tool to track unassigned, in-progress, and completed tasks would help ensure time is used as efficiently as possible.

How we built it

For the front end we worked with CSS and ReactJS 🎨. The backend to connect our AI Bot 🤖 to the frontend was done with Node.JS. We used Google’s Gemini to create the chatbot feature.

Challenges we ran into

The team had minimal experience in ReactJS so there was a steep learning curve. We went through documentations and asked for assistance from mentors to support our learning journey. Alongside there were many issues with connecting to the server with our Gemini AI Bot. We first tried integrating the chatbot with OpenAI, then HuggingFace, which presented many issues connecting the backend with the frontend. However, Gemini was easy to integrate through articles/documentations, particularly the Medium post by Sumuditha Lansakara.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of completing the project using technologies that were new to us such as React and Node JS and the fact that we managed to get through the errors and made it work especially in a short time frame. Customizing the chat-bot particularly for the natural disaster was one of the things we were particularly happy about.

What we learned

We all learnt new technologies such as how to use APIs and integrate it into ReactJS.

What's next for RescueHub

• We want to successfully integrate a database that supports REST APIs for the community forum, where users can interact in real time to give resources to each other
• A mobile friendly/responsive design
• A login page for volunteers and government officials to add safe evacuation zones

Built With

• css
• gemini-ai
• leaflet.js
• node.js
• react