Safe-Spot

Inspiration

We’ve all seen news of floods swallowing towns, wildfires racing across hills, or earthquakes rattling cities and it can feel overwhelming. We wanted a simple, friendly tool that cuts through the noise and answers the big question: “How worried should I be right now?” Safe-Spot was born from that idea: real-time alerts + one clear risk score = peace of mind.

What it does

Spot hazards nearby
Whether it’s a flood, fire, quake, or storm, Safe-Spot pulls in live feeds and maps them around you.
Crunches a 1–100 score
It factors in distance, hazard type, wind or magnitude, elevation, and even time of day to give you one easy-to-understand number.
Tappable map markers
Tap any marker and instantly see your personalized risk. No jargon, no charts just a raw score.
Finds your nearest shelter
A handy card points to the closest safe spot and gives you one-tap directions.

How we built it

Expo & React Native for a smooth, cross-platform build.
react-native-maps to paint the world around you and drop interactive callouts.
Pure JS logic to normalize inputs (distance, wind, elevation, etc.) and calculate our risk score on the fly.
Expo Location API for pinpointing where you are and doing the math to each hazard.
Iterative design
We kept testing on-device, gathering feedback, and fine-tuning until it felt intuitive.

Challenges we ran into

Inconsistent data feeds
Not all alerts speak the same language. We had to build smart parsers and defaults so nothing ever breaks.
Performance on phones
Rendering lots of polygons and distance calculations at once can lag. We learned to batch updates and memoize heavy operations.
Third-party library issues
We tried on-device ML under Expo Go but hit roadblocks, so we pivoted to a lightweight JS function that just works.
Offline handling
Cellular drops happen. We added caching so recent alerts and shelters stay available even when you lose signal.

Accomplishments we’re proud of

Instant risk insights
Tap a marker and get a score in under a second.
Seamless shelter lookup
From risk awareness to directions in two taps.
Readable, accessible UI
Clear map layers, high-contrast text, and thoughtful design for stressful moments.
Solid offline support
Your data stays usable, no Wi-Fi required once you’ve opened the app.

What we learned

Keep it simple
A pure JS approach trumps complex on-device ML when your priority is reliability.
Expect the unexpected
Handling edge cases (missing wind data, weird timestamps) is just as important as the main flow.
User feedback matters
Early testers helped us tweak normalization so “50” actually felt like medium risk.
Optimize early
Profiling performance on real devices saved us from nasty bottlenecks later.

What’s next for Safe-Spot

Custom risk profiles
Let users tweak how much weight distance, elevation, or hazard type have in their score.
Offline map tiles
Pre-download regions so you’re covered even in black-spot areas.
Community shelters
Empower local organizations to add and update safe locations.
Smart alerts
Down the road, integrate optional machine-learning models to refine scores based on historical outcomes.