WACH | Devpost

Two open events in the open event view
Event details of an example event
One open event just popped up
An event in the my event tab
No catastrophes happened, though no need to help
Two events, the user participating in the upper one
No catastrophes happened, though no need to help

Inspiration

"Es hakt beim Krisenmanagement im Ahrtal: Helfer und Betroffene fordern stärkere Koordination" - ""It's faltering in crisis management in the Ahr valley: Helpers and those affected demand stronger coordination."" Rhein-Zeitung (30. Juli 2021)

The flooding in the region of Ahr valley in 2021 was disastrous. And part of the problem was a severely flawed crisis management system: Hundreds of citizens of close-by regions were offering to help the affected people, couldn't, however, since there was no reliable and effective coordination system for the voluntary workers. We want to make such a scenario for Munich impossible! That's why we strive to build a fast and resilient volunteer coordination tool for the City of Munich!

What it does

Our tool provides one single centralized platform to coordinate voluntary helpers. Our first prototype is specialized on the needs of the helpers. It therefore provides features like a notification service, which informs you about open tasks in your area. To enable customization, the user can freely decide, what sort of tasks he wants to be informed about. When the user accepts a task he is provided with a detailed overview including the planned time slot for the task, the route to the location, and an explanation of the task. Information about the accident can be provided in a separate application by the responsible officials of the City of Munich.

How we built it

Our solution consists of three main components: Two React web apps and an Express.js backend. The React apps are facing the volunteers and the city officials, respectively. The backend, on the other hand, manages the communication between the two. We use REST API to propagate events from the city's frontend to the backend, where they are being processed and prospectively also stored. Furthermore, we utilzed WebSocket to forward the processed events from the backend to the helper's app.

Challenges we ran into

In the beginning, we were facing some issues regarding the most appropriate setup for the backend and discussed it extensively. Optimizing the visuals and user experience also brought along some challenges :)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Bringing our vision and concept to reality!
Making the communication go smoothly between the three services.
Ultimately, we are also proud of our frontend :)

What we learned

All of us got the chance to get our hands on some new frameworks and technologies, which kept some nice learnings on hand!

What's next for WACH

Since we mainly focused on the helpers' perspective in our prototype, a logical next step is to implement an accessible tool for the institutions to coordinate and create open tasks.

Another possible refinement are resource allocation optimization algorithms working in a more global scope. Those algorithms aggregate over different institutions. Thereby, an optimization of time efficiency to save every live possible can be achieved.