Inspiration
People across the world are faced with high crime rates against people who are walking late at night. At UW, NightWalk helps us feel and stay safe walking at night as we can ask for an escort. However, most people across the world are at risk of being attacked when they walk late at night. We wanted to help people feel and stay safe when walking home at night like we do.
What it does
Safe Paths is a Facebook Messenger Bot that provides you the safest path to your destination, avoiding areas with previous incidents of crime, and also showing you these spots as a heatmap to help you get home safe.
How we built it
We originally planned on making the application a Java Web App, and then discovered that the Google Maps API didn't permit making HeatMaps with Java. As a result, we moved onto Javascript. The Node application is the service that takes the request from Facebook, processes the same, and then returns a link which shows the map to the user
Challenges we ran into
Our primary challenge was getting familiar with the google maps API. Making a messenger bot from scratch was also a hurdle initially. In addition to that, integrating everything together into one entity was an additional challenge. Getting the data set consisting of information about the crime incidents and wrangling data was also a challenge.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of the fact that our project does something worthwhile and ensures safety of commuters. Many a times, while traveling, we are apprehensive about the safest possible option and using the safe-paths application suggests the safest path possible on a dynamic google maps interface thereby ensuring safety and security at all times.
What we learned
We learned numerous things along our journey : Learning to work with the Google Maps API, creating a bot from scratch, integrating all modules together, learning more javascript along the way were the things we learnt.
What's next for Safe Paths
Safe Paths could be converted into a Web App and also a Mobile App that users may use to get directions instead of just a line-path on a map. We could also expand outside the U-District and bring together other data sets to allow other users to also be able to use this app.
We also intend to fine-tune our algorithm more. Taking into account, the type of incident (how violent it was) and then avoiding paths having more violent incidents could be an added feature.
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