Emergen

Emergen allows you silently pick the emergency that is occuring, and alert both people in your vicinity and the police, all in a matter of seconds.

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Inspiration

Our inspiration came mainly from the unfortunate and horrible rise in sexual assault, trafficking, abuse, and hate crimes. We hope that this app can relieve the burden of those who are unfortunately struggling through these issues.

What it does

This SOS app allows the user to utilize it when they are in a state of emergency. It is especially designed for times where seconds can matter significantly and when speed and quietness are vital to the safety of the user. The user can click the SOS button, and is then taken through a questionnaire where they can quickly select the options that match their emergency. From there, geolocation technology is used to grab the user's location. The user has five options: 1. Contact 911 using the TEXT TO 911 service (if available in their region) 2. Contact local services and view other resources at times when the police don't seem necessary (such as suicide prevention hotlines), 4. Use the app's Vicinity Mode to notify neighbors (who have the app installed) of the emergency, and finally 5. text the user's "trusted contacts" which they can select about their state of emergency. The text should alert whoever is needed to be notified and hopefully save the user's life.

How we built it

We used React Native and Redux for the frontend technologies. We specifically used Expo as our CLI. For the backend technologies such as for the geolocation feature, we used Axios.

Challenges we ran into

Communication were rough at first through Zoom, since we couldn't just glance at each other's computers or figure out problems. It was difficult working remotely but we made the best out of the situation and figured out how to work efficiently by meeting frequently and brainstorming ideas, mocking them up, and more, and changing things up a bit to make this fun! Additionally, working on a very tough deadline was also difficult for us, but we pushed on to get as much as we could done in this short amount of time and we are proud of it!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Through the construction of this application, we obtained a wider perspective on how technology can be used to solve socio cultural problems and even pressing medical issues. We were able to utilize many different API endpoints and even create our own to store data in our database. Overall, we believe that these aspects made our app more convenient for users. We were also fascinated by our ability to construct this app in less than 48 hours. This gave us confidence in our abilities to code the intricate parts of mobile applications.

What we learned

We learned that the construction of coding projects require more teamwork than many other types of projects, and communication is essential. Each one of us had designated roles including UI/UX, functionality, and backend. Although dividing up the roles worked as we further developed our app, we realized that communicating first and creating a firm plan of how to approach the app was the most important step.

What's next for Emergen

Our next steps are to finish this app, get all the features working, polish up the UI/UX, and publish it to the app store. Our previous mobile application, Fundsy, won the congressional app challenge and it has shown to be very successful after we released it officially. We hope to model its success with this novel application and enhance it with weekly updates to keep users informed and provide better features. Finally, we will continue our endeavors for solving modern problems with computer programming and truly explore the depths of our impacts in the field.

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