Inspiration
Currently we live in a time of ever increasing crime rates, from large scale events like gang violence and shootings to smaller yet incredibly distressing events like muggings. However while the crime rate is at an all time high, we are not even aware of most events! While one can argue large scale events are shown on the news, there are two major flaws: for one it take a while before the news is even broadcasted, rendering you unformed in the meantime, and the second being smaller scale events are rarely ever shown. Wouldn’t it be much easier if just from the click of an app, you could report a nearby emergency event or have all nearby emergencies pop up allowing you to report a possible shooting nearby or inform you that the current location you’re in is infamous for gang violence.
What it does
With the above issues in mind me and my team decided to create CrimeX - a mobile application allowing you to always stay informed through the use of 3 features : an interactive map which shows the users current location as well as pointers reflecting different emergency events occurring near the user, a report feature allowing the user to report emergencies nearby and provide information about these events and a last feature which is currently under construction being a newsfeed allowing users to stay informed at every moment of the day.
How we built it
We utilized Java and XML for the overall app structure, the google maps API to obtain the location of the user and find nearby events as well as sqlite to keep a database for tracking the different crimes.
Challenges we ran into
Given that it was our first hackathon and some of us were new to creating Android apps, there were a myriad of issues and errors we ran into while implementing the various features of the app. In particular implementing the menu bar and the location tracker probably took the most time.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
While we were all very new to android studio, we still managed to successfully implement a database to store user reports and information about the different crimes, a map with live location tracking, and pointers on the map displaying different events and crimes occurring in different areas.
What we learned
From this experience we learned various features of android studio.
What's next for CrimeX
In the future we plan on implementing a fully functional news feed and advice centre, as well as a help tab teaching new users how to navigate the app. We also plan on using the Toronto Police API to enter recently occurred emergencies.
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