A Mobile App to Help Natural Disaster Victims
A quick study of how we can help victims of natural disaster by using a shelter hosting app.
Background
Natural disasters can cause great damage and even loss of life. According to data at Our World in Data, natural disasters kill more than 60.000 people globally, with earthquakes as the major threat.
Those immense numbers are humans and most of them are living in poverty. This may happen due to poor infrastructure. Needless to say, there are still people who build a house with no roof, there are still households with 8 people in a 3x3 room, and these people can’t live properly even if there is no natural disaster. The condition never gets better due to slow assistance for the victims.
Seeing that sort of tragedy, we realize everyone can contribute, even in a little action. And here we make a mobile app.
Main Problems
What are problems that can be solved digitally? To obtain the answer, we interview some people and gather the result as follows:
- Most people are concerned about the current disasters solution.
- Intensity of natural disasters event is increasing due to global warming.
- Assistance from government tends to be slow.
In short, they are concerned with natural disasters that worsen by global warming and slow assistance from the government. What a pity. Additionally, in several disasters namely earthquakes and floods, there are such common problems like communication loss which leads to difficulty in accessing food and medicine. And, this may happen in weeks or so.
This leads to our main focus: How can we help the victims quickly, while at the same time make the government easier to provide assistance?
Housing System — The Facts
With the population growth globally, the challenge to provide adequate housing for the additional million can be hard. However, if disasters occur, this can be solved by providing enough housing at post-disasters events. But first and foremost, let’s do the reality check:
People want homes, not “housing units”, and want to be involved in buildings.
Housing programs play a crucial role to overcome post disaster events and its recovery. It allows the victims to have their private space so they can come back and continue their life. Yet most of the time, temporary houses are only built when disaster occurs, and are often criticized for being unsustainable and inadequate.
The Concept — Shelter Hosting
As mentioned before, when shelters are built after disasters occur, this can trigger another issue because the building process takes a lot of time! To solve this issue, the existing shelters or one that have been built before should be ready whenever possible so everyone can use it.
There goes our concept. By providing a list of ready-to-use shelters, victims can find nearby shelters from their location using the app. What’s more, users also can provide their house as a shelter if they want to help the community.
Along with this concept, we think that the government can focus on distributing medical care and food assistance accordingly at each shelter without worrying too much about housing issues anymore.
How It Works
When disasters occur nearby from users location, the app will display the disaster’s details and information, as well as providing the survival guide.
In this case : Typhoon has occur in some area at Japan.
Then, the app will provide help by offering the users nearby shelter. This can be accessed via home screen and disaster details.
At this stage, users can browse freely and decide which shelters they want to reside in. The shelter lists will display its quantity and availability. If the quantity displayed in red, then it is not available and vice versa.
When the shelter on the map is selected, it will show more details and information. This includes what amenities they provide, and its address. As mentioned above, if the user can’t provide amenities, the government can distribute their medical care, food supply, etc.
After deciding the shelter, the app will automatically show the safest route from users current location to their shelter destination. At the screen, also include some of the information like travel time, distance, and predicted arrival time at the location.
If the victims need some information regarding the shelters, they can connect and chat with the shelter host via chat features.
Conclusion
Post-disaster management is something that must be really considered as we keep moving forward. As the global population increased rapidly and climate change can’t be avoided, we should have prepared for the worst even if we don’t want to.
In the end, it is just a quick study of what we think can help solve the problems in handling the post-disaster problems, especially in the shelter and housing field.
Closing
Thanks for reading until the end, we really appreciate your time and support! Also please kindly check our full presentation at Behance.
