Disasters often strike, when we are least prepared to face them. They leave behind a trail of destruction, adversely affecting human life and property. The loss caused by disasters can be significantly reduced with better communication and proper management. Keeping this in mind we designed R V SAFE, a one stop solution for effectively handling any kind of disaster (Natural/Manmade).
Essentially RVSAFE is an Azure powered Android App that draws inspiration from the problems faced by people during disasters and seeks to solve them in the best possible manner. We explain each feature of the app below using the prospective GUI designed by us(work in progress).
The following are the azure services used by RV Safe-
- Azure Cosmos DB
- Azure Cognitive Services
- Azure Web Services.
- Azure Blob Services.
- Azure App services.
Download of (client app) apk available at http://aztests.azurewebsites.net/download.
Download the Insta Help Server App at http://aztests.azurewebsites.net/download/server.
RVSAFE opens with a simple user login/registration activity that assigns each user a unique id and lets him choose a password. We use the one time authentication feature so as to skip the arduous task of entering a password each time. The user is then presented with 4 different tabs each serving an important function. The home tab presents the user with different disaster cards, each representing an active disaster. The app admins can easily start a new card for any disaster simply by entering a few lines of information in our admin service that is backed by Azure Cosmos DB. The user at this point can either indicate if he/she is stuck in the disaster or if he/she wants to help out by choosing any one of the options.
We also display the contact numbers of the POC(point of contact)/leader of the nearest safe zone, and the nearest rescue groups. Apart from this we have 2 other interesting features. +Upload an image of people stuck in the disaster
The user is allowed to upload an image of the people trapped along with him. We use Face API provided by Azure Cognitive Services to detect the gender and the age of the people trapped. We count the number of elderly, children, women and men trapped and assign different priorities to the groups. These images along with priority tags are shared with the rescue groups. This can be very beneficial to the rescue groups as it can help them prioritize their rescue operations and also choose their mode of rescue accordingly (example airlift etc).
+Upload 3 images of the landmarks nearby.
Very often in disasters such as floods the topology of the place changes. Hence it becomes very difficult for rescuers to spot the locations in which people are trapped. In such situations having images of nearby landmarks can help rescuers easily approximate victim's location. Hence the victim can upload any 3 (arbitrarily chosen) images of his surroundings so as to help rescuers spot his/her location easily.
Another feature we are working on currently(not displayed in the screenshots) is the ability for a user to indicate his requirements (food,fresh water,medicine,bedding etc) through the app so that the same can be air-dropped at his location or carried by rescuers.
All these features as you can see require internet connection. But what if the user has no internet connection? To accommodate this possibility and provide offline feasibility we designed a novel architecture for RVSAFE called insta-help. Due to the unavailability of messaging API’s like Twilio we decided to use our own architecture for the time being, by using a dedicated mobile number to relay information. The working of insta-help is as follows.
With Insta-Help incorporated RVSAFE becomes feasible both online as well as offline. The (Insta-Help feature is complete and will be integrated into the app in the next few days)
This feature is made for those who wish to extend their help to people trapped in the disaster directly or indirectly. The user in this case is presented with 2 tabs
- Volunteer
- Donate
Volunteer groups play very important and diverse roles in disaster management ranging from the distribution of food packets and administering first aid to victims, to participating in actual rescue operations
This tab presents the user with an option to either join an existing volunteer group or start his/her own volunteer group. If a user wishes to start your his/her own volunteer group then he/she is required to fill out a simple registration form after which the user shall receive a confirmation call from app admins and a card will be created for his/her group.A user can also choose to join an existing volunteer group by using the request to join option after which the group founder will receive the user's name and contact details and can choose to accept/decline the request. The user can choose to volunteer in at max 1 group.
We have managed to design a simple web portal for NGO’s to facilitate this process. The integration with our database is however pending and will be completed soon.
Coming back to the starting view we have 3 other tabs
In order to make RVSAFE a constant security companion we have included the SOS facility as well. The SOS facility allows users to immediately alert emergency services with just a single tap. Apart from that users also have an option to send their location in the form of a google maps link via sms to any 3 contacts they choose.
This feature provides weather forecast of your city from registered sources. It gives you a week of predicted weather data backed with relevant indicators of the level of criticality. The weather data includes the temperature variations during the past week, the maximum and minimum temperature recorded, level of rainfall etc Apart from this we also provide live data of the conditions of the dams near the user's locality. We monitor their conditions continuously and raise alerts when the water levels in them reach dangerously high levels. The Am i safe feature acts as an intelligent watchdog that faithfully alerts the user of any threats. The work on this feature is still under progress.
This tab basically educates the users on best practices to be followed if a disaster strikes. This can help keep the users better informed on how to effectively handle disasters.
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The rescuer view shows a mission map that has multiple clusters. Each of these clusters shows you the number of people trapped within that region. Zooming out causes the clusters to combine to form larger clusters which can provide an overview to the rescuers on the number of people, yet to be rescued. Zooming in causes the clusters to split into markers on the map, depicting the specific locations on the map where the people are trapped. The rescuers can see different colored markers wherein the color represents the priority that is calculated by taking factors like number of people trapped, status (safe/unsafe) etc into consideration. Clicking on the markers pushes up a sliding window that shows landmarks uploaded by the victims as well as the demographic analytics of the victim image, as computed by the azure face api.
Overall RVSAFE is a complete app that makes a relatively complex task of effectively handling disasters look easy. We are passionate to get it into active use soon.