WIC FINDER

Inspiration

We are Environmental Science students that work a lot with ArcGIS to create hydrologic models but at WIC Hack we were thinking of different applications of the program.

What it does

One model show emergency response times for areas in Tompkins County NY. Another is a model that would show where food deserts are based on WIC stores locations in Rochester.

How we built it

These models were made in ArcGIS using definition queries to highlight the feature we were initially looking for. It first started with us looking at emergency responders response times, which then evolved to examining food deserts and were WIC Store locations were. The models were build by using store location APIs and python.

Challenges we ran into

Limited coding experience. ArcGIS takes of a lot of processing power to compute the vast amount of data and it often leads to it crashing. There were multiple time that the program crashed and all work would be lost if we did not save frequently. Taking good notes help overcome this challenge. It also took some time to find the data and then preprocess it before it was in a usable format.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting the model to work and actually highlight what we wanted and using network analyst correctly and applied to both walking, public transportation, and driving times.

What we learned

Always save your work and take good notes...

What's next for WIC FINDER

Making models models for all counties and turning it into a website, and add a shopping cart feature that would show WIC stores that would accept your coupons for the items you need.