stayinasafe.space

Home Page
Report Page
Map Page

Inspiration

"Near Hastings, we both got chased"; "this morning [friend] was driving and was followed along her route by a white van"; "did you hear about the silver car that's targeting young girls near UBC?"; "there was a whole stabbing right next to our school, yet we weren't informed." These are all real-life comments we've heard from the people around us, exposing how prevalent danger is. Yet, it's difficult to keep track of all these events, or even hear about them at all.

Apart from the everyday incidents that we see and hear, official statistics also tell the tale. Research and surveys conducted by Statistics Canada show that women are more likely to be harassed or experience unwanted behaviours both physically and online than their male counterparts by almost 20%.

With these in mind, we've set out to create a website where anonymous reports of assault or unwanted behaviour can be collected, organized, and made readily available to the general public who worry about their safety.

What it does

stayinasafe.space crowdsources reports to keep everyone updated on potentially dangerous locations and situations, as well as raising awareness on taking caution, as it is often the best preventative measure for personal safety.

How we built it

We built it using HTML, CSS, Javascript, node.js, SQL via CockroachDB, and parcel.

Challenges we ran into

A lot! In particular, we had difficulty sending the data from our database to our map. Halfway in we found out that we could not directly access our database from our website, and thus had to create an API as an extra step. Likewise, we redeemed our free domain (stayinasafe.space) from domain.com, but were unable to connect it properly to GitHub Pages and prevent it from redirecting to domain.com’s parking server.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of creating a web app that we believe will help individuals look out for their own and each other's safety, creating connections in an unusual but helpful way. We dove headfirst into APIs and databases and languages we’d never used before, so we’re also proud of creating a functional product that was not abandoned halfway.

What we learned

We learned about the nuances of Javascript, how to access databases through Javascript, and the power of Googling.

What's next for stayinasafe.space

We hope to launch stayinasafe.space through a usable domain and advertise it through the means of social media. We also look forward to possibly working with the provincial or municipal legislature to help promote awareness of public safety with our web application.