HazardWise

Inspiration

Three of our members live in wildfire-prone areas and have witnessed the potentially disastrous effects of a lack of planning when natural disasters strike. In a world increasingly affected by climate change, natural disasters only seem to get more frequent and more catastrophic. With such volatility, the readily apparent lack of preparation is poised to cause billions of dollars in damage.

What it does

Our app aims to mitigate some of the effects by educating users about the most common natural disasters in their given region, providing information about the natural disaster itself as well as the most effective ways to prepare for it.

How we built it

We split the app into two parts, the client and the server. We developed the client app in Swift using SwiftUI and designed the client to be able to get data from the backend and display it to the user. We developed the backend server using C# and ASP.NET. The backend contains all of the business logic and uses machine learning algorithms to analyze historical natural disaster data to generate personalized natural disaster preparation advice, including insurance recommendations.

Challenges we ran into

We had significant trouble connecting the frontend to the backend API due to SSL certifications, and we spent an unprecedented number of hours learning new skills on the fly in order to integrate everything together.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We pulled, parsed, and analyzed millions of data points for a variety of uses - from region data to house values, we used the data to predict disaster chances and computed ideal insurance costs - we plan to increase the specificity of the insurance costs. This app can already be a powerful tool to combat educational inequity in disaster preparation.

What we learned

We learned more about our problem space through a myriad of different interviews with a diverse set of stakeholders who provided us with valuable insight into their respective experiences with various climate disasters. Their experience directed us towards quality education on preparation methods as well as a tool to minimize costs of property damage as a result of the hazards.

What's next for HazardWise

We plan to increase the number of features on Hazardwise, as well as improve the insurance feature to be more accurate and more useful for those not looking for individual house statistics. We ultimately envision HazardWise as an insurance assistant for the public that is tailored for each user and their economic and geographic situation.

We hope you'll join us on this journey!