Calamity Avoiders | Don’t Forget the Can Opener!
Awards & Nominations
Calamity Avoiders has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
The Challenge | Don’t Forget the Can Opener!
Disaster Me OUT
Disaster Me OUT is a personalized application, which notifies the person of an upcoming disaster and provides a list of guidelines, specifically designed for the user's life, conditions and family members.
THE PROBLEM
When was the last time you heard of a disaster, significantly affecting the life of people?
Probably it was not that long ago...
For instance the Hurricane Michael stroke the east cost of the United States recently. And even though people were warned a week in advance, there were still 50 casualties.
Even when you are warned about the disaster, you still need to know how to react adequately. The government providing guidelines but they are guidelines… for everyone… not tailored to the needs of the individual. And even so do you own the needed tools and consumables – face masks, medicine? What do you do about your pet?
One thing is certain - if you are prepared in advance you are drastically increasing your chances. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone had an emergency bag with them and not waste time panicking over what to get with them? Everyone exiting calmly in lines, gathering in safe places. Treating the wounded and building shelter. And all of this before the emergency units arrive?
Now think one step further… Wouldn’t it be great if people could react like that in every scenario, even when an unforeseen disaster strikes? Some sort of a universal preparation?
And If you think about it by preparing for one natural hazard you are also preparing yourself for others – clear thinking, priorities and accessing the risk. And what if you had personalized detailed guides for what to do at your fingertips!
OUR SOLUTION
Disaster Me OUT is an personalised informative application for Android devices (soon will be available for IOS).
After downloading Disaster Me OUT, the user is prompted with a series of questions requiring some personal information regarding the user’s personal (allergies, diseases etc.) health, family and household (if any pets are owned). This is done in order to give relevant information when disaster strikes – you do not want to forget your lifesaving medicine or God forbid your baby…
After the initialization process the user is able to access the steps to undertake in the case of a natural disaster. These steps are tailored to the individual’s needs providing vital tips and relevant information.
In the event of a natural disaster occurring, the respective Metrological centre will send out notifications to the affected users. Clicking the notification leads them to the personalised steps which would ensure safe handling of the situation. The user can tick the steps that have been executed and continue with the next ones. This will not only help with reacting more adequately but will also help reduce panic.
Challenges
One of the main challenges in a project like ours is to deliver its customers with personalised and relevant information depending on the specific situation. Because we strive to help in a wide variety of natural disasters and cover personal requirements of any sort, a large database needs to be compiled and updated frequently. Information regarding allergies, different locations and climates needs to be gathered and to do that properly some expert help might be needed in the future.
While the personalisation process would help tremendously in the case of a natural disaster, it creates complications of its own. More precisely data protection and we are very concerned about keeping this personal information secret. We will make sure that everything is stored securely and not misused in any way or shared with third parties.
Another big part is convincing people our application is going to help them. After all what good is help that cannot be delivered because the user has not installed the app on their smartphone. So we are doing our best to show the potential that is locked in the functionality of our survival tool to the public and make the setting up process as seamless as we can.
Last but surely not least – software development! It is actually very hard to picture how much labour goes into creating an application, even the simplest one. We worked around the clock on top of our already packed schedules to make sure our application is functioning as expected and delivers the reliability that is to be expected of any emergency tool.
REPOSITORY
https://github.com/svetlinyotov/nasa-space-apps
RESOURCES
Аndroid Studio
https://www.trustedchoice.com/insurance-articles/b...
SpaceApps is a NASA incubator innovation program.