Disaster Dodger

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  Landing page

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  State selection

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  Curated List

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  Code

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  Wireframing

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  Logo

Inspiration

We've always felt so powerless when other people across the globe were suffering from natural disasters. They're unpredictable and can ruin someone's entire livelihood. The 2021 Mansfield earthquake in Australia is a prime example where people don't necessarily prepare for one since, they don't occur much there. So when we remembered the 5.9 magnitude earthquake striking, we knew we had to make something that can help everyone prepare and rebuild their community.

What it does

Our app allows you to select the state you live in to find the most common natural disasters that occur in your area. It then recommends you a curated list of items you need to prepare yourself.

How we built it

We build the frontend using React and Material UI and the backend with Flask. They communicate with each other through HTTP requests and the server fetches API data from OpenFema, a government API about natural disasters.

Challenges we ran into

We had to learn everything from scratch since we only had a little bit over a month of coding experience between us all. One of our biggest challenges, however, was making the backend with Flask. For some reason, we weren't getting any of the HTTP requests and we spent half a day on debugging. At the end, we decided to scrap it all and rebuild the entire backend from scratch.

Another challenge was learning React from scratch. Trying it figure it all out was difficult given we had no prior experience. At the very end, we got jump scared when we realized our API that we planned to use didn't exist anymore, so we had to quickly scramble for a remedy.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are extremely proud of everything we were able to accomplish given how little we knew about anything from the start. We're extremely proud of the beautiful UI that was designed and created, as well as learning how to work with multiple people on a project, APIs, HTTP, React, and working under time constraints.

What we learned

We learned how a frontend communicates with a backend with the respective React and Flask frameworks. We also learned how to handle API requests, make something from start to finish, wireframing, HTTP, working on a project with multiple people, and above all, how to have fun at our very first hackathon!

What's next for Disaster Dodger

We understand that preventative measures aren't enough so we want to implement more reactionary ones. We understand that when a disaster does strike, people are panicked and don't know what to do, so we want to be able to find the nearest disaster shelter to your location. We also want to have a login feature where it tracks what items you have bought and sends you a reminder when your disaster kit has expired items so you can replenish it.

Built With

• figma
• flask
• openfema
• react