Try it out at link
Inspiration
According to FBI crime statistics in 2015, Detroit's violent crime rates were the worst in the entire nation for cities with over a hundred thousand residences. This fact not only shocked us, but inspired us to do something about it. We wanted to create something simple that would be applicable to the general population. Our solution was staysafewith.me, an openly accessible web application that helps individuals avoid dangerous parts of Detroit.
What it does
By taking years of crime data made available at link, and Google Maps Direction API, staysafewith.me proposes an optimized travel path that takes into consideration the relative safety of an area. By taking in a start and end location, much like Google Maps does, staysafewith.me will provide path suggestions based on the records of violence in certain areas - it will help you which route is the safest to take.
How I built it
We started of by parsing the large amounts of raw data given by the Detroit Public Safety Department. A lot of this was very applicable data; however, based on the time restraints given we had to choose the most relevant parts to analyze and implement. With a JSON file of over 1.4 million lines, we started off by processing the raw location-based data into usable information via Python. More specifically, we parsed for longitude and latitude coordinates of crimes.
Then, we converted this into a serviceable graph which represented Detroit by plotting longitude and latitude coordinates. This made it very easy to convert into a crime heat map and compare with the data that Google Directions API provides us.
The final step of the journey was making a front-end service that was easy to use and aesthetically appealing to users. We had to plot our routes onto an interactive map of Detroit and suggest which paths were safer. In the end, through Namecheap's web-hosting services, we were able to make our website openly accessible to all users.
Challenges we ran into
First and foremost, our spontaneously created team. The 4 of us came to MHacks without teammates and, through the power of friendship, became an unbreakable unit. All jokes aside, working with strangers who have had different backgrounds and different abilities was one of the most challenging, yet rewarding parts of this entire hackathon. Also, node.js was a pain.
What we learned
The power of friendship and node.js
What's next for StaySafeWith.me
There are countless possibilities for staysafewith.me to expand. An interesting idea suggested by another hacker was to consider the time of day. Some areas might have crime that occurs more frequently during day than night. That being said, it might be a safer path during night than during day. Small, but interesting changes such as the one mentioned can increase the functionality and uniqueness of staysafewith.me, two features which will allow it to emerge as a successful project.
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