TeamAwesome
** Call for Support **
Call for Support is a platform for users to request relief in the form of supplies, shelter, food, etc. It logs disaster data points regarding type, location, and date of disaster. If anyone is affected by a disaster, they can request for relief, and anyone willing to give relief can look at individual relief requests and decide to whom they would like to donate.
This project was created using HTML, CSS (with the Bootstrap framework), Javascript (with jQuery), and Firebase. APIs used were the OpenFEMA API (which logs disasters in the United States after it has occurred), and Google Maps API. OpenFEMA API was called using a GET request through AJAX, a jQuery tool.
The website's map logs information regarding the location, type, and date of occurrence of the disaster. It is displayed through markers, which users can click on to look at the information pertaining to that disaster.
Firebase is used to store information regarding users affected by the data. Users who would like to help out can contact individuals requesting relief.
** Some Background About Our Project **
We originally were tasked to come up with a project that demonstrated our use and experience of HTML, CSS, JS, API calling, and Firebase as a class project. One of our TAs then told us about Call for Code, which was our inspiration for this project.
Each individual was given a task of what to complete based on their prior experience with coding and interests. Emily and Michael were tasked with developing the front end of the website and the creation/development of the Firebase database. Zaid and Faisal were tasked with creating a map that would log the OpenFEMA API data.
** Some Problems **
Most of the problems in the project were strictly on the back end aspect of the project. Google requires that a certain number of API calls be made when logging markers on its map, which hindered the amount of data points we could place. In addition, when generating API keys, there was some weird error that would not allow us to create a map sometimes. Also, there aren't many great APIs out there that record data regarding disasters. OpenFEMA was the best and easiest one to find, but since it records information only pertaining to the US, we could not record any disaster data for the rest of the world. There is a solution to this issue - http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php
This website logs disaster information in real time. Only problem is that it does not provide an API, so web scraping tools would be needed to access its information. Since we are just novice web developers with a lack of experience in web scraping, we decided not to invest our time in trying to create a web scraper (since this was also a class project with a deadline).
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