According to the Sandy Hook Promise organization, “each day 12 children die from gun violence in America.” In recent years, the rate of school shootings in the United States has increased significantly, making it a serious concern for educators, students, and families. As students, we are constantly aware that schools no longer feel completely safe and this ongoing sense of unease reinforces the need for stronger safety measures. The goal of the project was to provide more resources to schools for these active shooter situations and facilitate the communication between teachers, administrators, and law enforcement to save as much time as possible.
The purpose of this project is to provide a school safety and emergency response system that supports teachers, administrators, and law enforcement during an active shooter situation. The system involves two connected applications: a mobile app used by teachers and a desktop admin platform used by administrators and law enforcement. When a shooting incident occurs, the admin activates lockdown mode through the desktop which automatically turns on sound monitoring on teachers’ phones. It listens for loud noises such as gunshots and combines those detections to approximate the area of the school where the shooter may be located.
This information is displayed on a live map of the school, showing an estimated zone to help teachers and law enforcement determine how close the threat is. By providing real-time information with an easy to use interface, the project facilitates clear communication and coordination during a lockdown. Those with access to the desktop are also able to send live broadcast messages to notify teachers with crucial information, such as evacuation plans or whether to stay in shelter. Admin can also generate an incident report with information about events that occurred during the lockdown.
During an active shooter situation, every second counts, and with this system in place, it helps staff make quicker, safer, and more confident decisions to protect those in danger.
To create this project, we designed a connected system that allows for consistent communication between mobile and desktop platforms. The mobile part was built using React Native, while the desktop web version was developed using React with Tailwind CSS to maintain a cohesive design. To support real-time communication and data synchronization between both platforms, we used Firebase as the backend infrastructure.
Given a limited amount of time, our biggest challenge was ensuring that we were setting reasonable goals and expectations for our project, while also striving for a quality showcase of our skills and ideas. In addition, we had to quickly familiarize ourselves with the React Native framework while also developing the “bridge” using Firebase to ensure our two platforms could communicate without delay.
Through this experience, our primary achievement was successfully implementing a cross-platform system, using firebase as a real-time bridge between our React Native mobile client and our web-based administrative dashboard. Additionally, we were able to have a fairly smooth process of development, where each team member communicated and worked on their designated tasks, resulting in minimal conflicts between our changes.
For this project, we learned how to develop and design both mobile and desktop applications and synchronize them using Firebase. Given the time constraints, it was important to manage our time effectively, which meant prioritizing the project’s main features and focusing on functionality.
To make this project more applicable, we want to integrate real time location tracking for each teacher, as well as a way for each school system to upload their building layout(s). Another helpful feature would be to take into consideration the possibility of there being more than one active shooter by making note of large distances between two detected threats.
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