Inspiration
The inspiration of our project came to us when we were doing research for project ideas. We realized that in urbanized metropolitan cities, crime rates are generally higher, especially in break and enters, assault and hate-crime. We wanted to make an application/website that would help users living in these cities view officially reported crimes in their local area over the past months in the age where rarely anyone watches the news. We also wanted to make the application/website alert users whenever a new crime report occurs in their area, so that they could be warned beforehand and stay safe.
What it does
Due to time constraints, the website were able to implement a detailed map where users can view reports of criminal incidents in their area. If they choose to see more information, a full report from the local police service will be given to them.
How we built it
Following extensive planning to outline the implementation of Secure City’s functions, our team seamlessly transitioned into the execution phase. The incorporation of MongoDB facilitated the storage of user data for login and sign up purposes. Web scraping was done on local police websites for official crime reporting data whereupon the data was given to the front end for processing. React was also utilized to facilitate seamless integration of HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create a dynamic and interactive user interface.
Challenges we ran into
As a group mainly consisting of new hackers, we had to learn most of what we wanted to implement and integrate in these past 36 hours. Our first major hurdle was venturing into the world of NoSQL databases, specifically MongoDB. With no prior experience in database management, we found ourselves navigating a completely unfamiliar terrain. This demanded a careful implementation to guarantee that our connection and usage of MongoDB was correct.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We were able to work together under tight time constraints and with new and unfamiliar technology that we learned on-the-job. Under higher stress-inducing conditions, we were able to create a fully-functioning web prototype and a working product that includes a functional front-end.
What we learned
We learned all about MongoDB, web scraping using python and React over the past 36 hours.
What's next for Secure City
Secure City is going to try to implement the functionalities that we had to cut due to time constraints (i.e. sending real-time alerts to users, filing reports of crime as a user).
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