· projects · 2 min read
Mergency: Alert System
MRGENCY joins 911 Operators and Emergency Dispatchers with First Responders to help save lives.
We were inspired by the GeoComm challenge outlined by Ryan Thomas due to the challenging integrations with emergency response and its ability to save lives.
What it does
MERGENCY is split into two parts: a web application and a mobile app. Both of these applications are API-driven, so data is shared across platforms. The web application is designed for 911 Operators and Emergency Dispatchers. They can locate an emergency within the application and send situational context to the first responder. The app is designed for First Responders in the field. They receive the events from 911 Operators and are connected to the insight that the 911 Operators have with a map, directions, notes about the emergency, and it’s urgency level. This situational insight combined with real-time notifications connects First Response directly to the emergency.
How we built it
Through blood, sweat, and a lot of tears, we built our application with a Vue frontend and a serverless AWS backend for the web app. For the Android app, we used Java and Android Studio.
Challenges we ran into
We had a lot of trouble getting the push notifications working with a background service—which enables notifications when the app is not running. This required many hours of debugging but we eventually figured it out.
Accomplishments that we are proud of
The system is fully working and has a crazy good amount of resiliency and availability through our AWS architecture. This is the first time we used push notifications so we are super proud of that feature.
What we learned
We learned a lot about AWS architecture and how notifications work. This knowledge will help us make better, more reliable applications in the future.
What’s next for MRGENCY: Alert System
We would add Route53 failovers to Lambda and S3 to enable even higher resiliency if we were targeting a release to actual responders. Additionally, to help 911 operators more, we plan to add more useful information on the webpage for 911 operators such as local traffic and the nearest potential responder.
Additionally, due to our Placekey integration, our software could be integrated seamlessly with other placekey supporting services and applications.