https://wirvsvirushackathon.org/
We pick challenge #797 Grocery shopping: Automated allocation of shop & time
Description:
The corona crisis pushes people into unsuspected and possibly exaggerated grocery shopping patterns. This might lead to crowded supermarkets at specific times resulting in a higher risk of infection. While some supermarkets might be heavily frequented others are not, which also challenges coordination of supply logistics. As a result items might be sold out at some stores, while still being available at others. Current developments force some stores to limit the number of consumers allowed inside the store which will lead to additional wait times and might shift the risk of infection to the queue. This results in three main issues: 1) First this imposes major stress on supermarkets and supply chains. 2) On top of that grocery shopping limits possibility of social distancing, as food is essential to human life. 3) Consumers might not find the products they need.
Question:
How can people be assigned to supermarkets and dates at a specific areas to distribute demand equally in order to limit waiting times, crowdedness and risk of infection (by increasing social distancing).This imposes several sub problems:- How to achieve fairness? - How big is the desirable radius?- How to distribute equally?- How can the closest locations be preferred?- How to make sure people get assigned to an affordable market?- How can markets help in enforcing policies? - How to increase compliance?
Goals:
First and foremost the goal should be to evaluate the reasonableness of possible solutions, including those mentioned in this proposal. A progressive web app (PWA) might pull supermarket information from google maps and assign app users to a store and date. It will then generate a certificate that is stored on the users app instance. There will be a more detailed google doc on this specific idea at the beginning of the hackathon.This raises specific questions:- Would this have a reasonable effect if a good amount of people would use this app?- Scalable?- How to engage sufficient people to use the appThis project would require different skills:Front-End-Developers, Back-End-Developers, Data Scientists, Statisticians, Coordinators, Stakeholder Intelligence, Progressive Thinkers, Political and medical stakeholdersA minimum solution could also be a website that provides visitors with guidelines on how to behave during grocery shopping.