SEMA | Devpost

Inspiration 🌀

The recent tragedies of Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused significant devastation and loss of life. We aim to keep those in vulnerable areas informed about upcoming hurricanes so they can take necessary precautions. Our app helps users find nearby gas stations and shelters while encouraging preparedness for potential impacts.

What It Does 💡

Our app provides real-time information about significant weather events based on the user's location, displaying local alerts and updates. Users can view a live map of their surroundings and find nearby shelters using Red Cross data. For specific disaster-related questions, an interactive chatbot powered by OpenAI offers personalized support.

How We Built It 🛠️

We used the NOAA weather.gov API to pull significant weather events. By capturing the user's current location, we input those coordinates into the API to display relevant local events. Additionally, we implemented the Google Maps API to show a live map featuring the user's current location. We also accessed information from the Red Cross to find nearby open shelters. To enhance user interaction, we utilized OpenAI's GPT-3.5 Turbo to create a disaster AI chatbot, allowing users to ask specific questions that may not be covered on our site. We combined everything together using Pico CSS to display a smooth and user-friendly interface.

Challenges We Ran Into 💻

One of our biggest challenges was selecting the right idea for the project. We had two concepts: the one we chose and a more complex offline system for hurricane relief using QR codes for deliveries. While innovative, the second idea posed significant risks, and we realized it might leave us without a solid foundation if issues arose.

Ultimately, we opted for the first idea as it provided a safer foundation, allowing us to implement various components and present a strong final product, even with time constraints.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of 🏆

We took full ownership of individually implementing different React components, collaborating as a team to bring everything together to successfully complete our project.