Plow Pal | Devpost

Inspiration

For many people, after a big snowstorm, driveways may be blocked and plans may be disrupted as a result. We wanted to make a tool that took the City of Windsor's open data on snow removal and presented a live map of the current location of all snow plows around the city, helping you to see when your street will be cleared.

What it does

Using the City of Windsor's open data on snow removal and snowplows, our tool displays the most recent location of each active snowplow and the path that it has cleared, along with the status of its salt spreader. This tool helps support the community by giving residents the ability to see how close a plow is to their neighborhood and as a result, estimate how long until their street may potentially be cleared. It also enables those leaving the house to plan their route and avoid blocked roadways.

How we built it

This tool was built using the Google Maps API and the City of Windsor's open data on snow removal. Programmed in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript with the help of JQuery, our tool takes the data from the City and presents it on an interactive Google map through its API.

Challenges we ran into

Our most difficult challenges were a result of the fact that this tool was programmed in the Fall, giving us no access to live snowplow data as none were operating. To get past this, we used archived data from January 2021 to simulate live data as a proof of concept for our tool. Other challenges included getting started with the basic foundations of the tool such as placing the marker icons and displaying the map since we had previously never used the Google Maps API.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the way we were able to have everything come together within the Google Maps API as we had never used it before and initially faced many difficulties. Additionally, we are proud of the way we were able to differentiate between different plows by truck number and ensure that they were displayed as individual routes.

What we learned

We learned how to use JavaScript to read from JSON files and how to properly use the Google Maps API, both of which were things we had not previously worked with.

What's next for Plow Pal

Next in Plow Pal's journey is to move from the proof of concept phase to be able to accept and interpret live data as the snow begins to fall in the Winter. As well, we would like to add new features such as colour changing routes to denote how long ago it has been cleared as well as other quality of life upgrades.