A disaster warning system for Orange County
The lack of information associated with the National Emergency Alert Systems compelled our group to seek a better solution to providing people with more convenient disaster warnings and comprehensive guidance. It was also to our attention that the recent Hawaiian missile crisis false alert could have been avoided if the administration UI was more intuitive and polished
For our web application, subscribed users will receive notifications of nearby disasters along with step by step guidance for various scenarios, live social media updates, a map of the affected areas and nearby shelters, hospitals, or grocery stores.
Built the app based on the express.js framework. "One Signal API" integration to handle pushing notifications and routing the subscriber to the disaster page. HTML, CSS, jQuery, and Bootstrap to make the layout of the website on the front end, for a dynamic map we used Google Maps, and Twitter's widgets.
We designated different roles, communicated any problems we encountered to be solved together, and effectively managed our project both goal and timewise. Everyone contributed in a seamless and effective way.
As with most coding projects, we faced various adversities attributed to coding projects. From realizing simple syntax errors to having to read large amounts of documentation on how to implement various different functions and API frustrated our group.
For us three freshmen, this was our first hackathon which is something to be quite proud of, and for us returnees, it was fun to teach and lead the newer ones around. Our project means a lot to us too and leaves us all in appreciation for all the efforts we put forth.
How to use bootstrap, connect back-end to front-end, API implementations, HTML, project/time management, communication, and how to use One Signal were just some of the many new tricks we learned in this Hackathon.
We hope to further implement more detailed maps, if possible with the locations of locally designated shelters such as high school gyms or underground mines. To hopefully develop our project to cover even more diverse and numerable types of disasters, cover more regions and provide even more helpful and accurate guides for people to deal with stressful crises calmly and adeptly.