## Inspiration

Walking is a sustainable and effective form of transit whose popularity is negatively impacted by perceived concerns about boredom and safety. People who are choosing between multiple forms of transit might not select walking due to these issues. Our goal was to create a solution that would make walking more enjoyable, encouraging people to follow a more sustainable lifestyle by providing new benefits to the walking experience.

## What it does

Our web app, WalkWithMe, helps connect users to other walkers nearby based on times and routes, allowing them to walk together to their intended destinations. It approximately finds the path that maximizes time spent walking together while also minimizing total travel distance for the people involved. People can create accounts that allows them to become verified users in the network, introducing a social aspect to walking that makes it fun and productive. Additionally, this reduces safety concerns as these are often less pronounced in groups of people versus individuals while walking; this is especially true at night.

## How we built it

We used react.js for the frontend, Sonr and Golang for the backend. We hosted our website using Firebase. Our map data was generated from the Google Maps API.

## Challenges we ran into

Our frontend team had to completely learn react.js for the project. We also did not have prior experience with the Sonr and Google Maps API. We needed to figure out how to integrate Sonr into the backend with Golang and Google Maps API to find the path.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of developing and implementing a heuristic algorithm that finds a reasonable path to walk to the destination and for creating an effective backend and frontend setup despite just learning react and Sonr in the hackathon. We also overcame many bugs relating to Google's geocoding API.

## What we learned

We learned react.js to display our interactive website efficiently, how to integrate Sonr into our project to store profile and location data, and how to use Google Maps to achieve our goals with our program.

## What's next for WalkWithMe

We have many ideas for how we can take the next step with our app. We want to add a tiered verification system that grants you credit for completing walks without issues. The higher you are in the rating system, the more often you will be recommended walks with smaller groups of people (as you are viewed as more trustworthy). We also want to improve the user interface of the app, making it more intuitive to use. We also want to expand on the social aspect of the app, allowing people to form walking groups with others and deepen connections with people they meet. We also want to add geolocation trackers so that users can see where their group members are, in case they don't walk at a similar speed toward the meet-up location.
## Inspiration

We hear stories about crimes happening around us everyday. It's especially terrifying since we're students and we just want to enjoy our college experience. While discussing ideas to hack, we realized this problem **resonated with all of us**. We immediately realized that we need to work on this.

## What it does

It gives you and your loved ones a chance to take your safety into your own hands. By using our application, you are taking control of the most important thing you have, your life. It generates the safest and shortest path from Location A to Location B.

## How we built it

We analyzed large data sets of crime over the past 10 years, picked up representative points after weighing them based on relevance and severity of crime. We then created a data anaytics flow (that can be easily repeated with new data) to glean more useful insights from the raw data. To help analyze the data further we plotted the data on Virtual Reality to look at data spreads and densities. This processed data was than pushed into our MongoDB database hosted on MLab. We then used these generalized clusters to see which areas we should avoid while routing using the Wrld and OSRM API's. From here our app generates a single route off of all the information based on what our algorithm devises to be the "safest route" for the user. This route is then plotted and displayed for the users convenience.

## Challenges we ran into

We started out with millions of cells of data, which made it really hard to work with. We had to filter out the most relevant data first and convert the data into a completely new format to optimize it for our path finding algorithm. In addition, we had to optimize our MongoDB to work well with our data as we made frequent queries to a database with originally over a million elements. In, addition, we constantly had issues mixing up latitude and longitude values as well as making HTTP requests for many APIs.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are happy that we were able to create a minimum viable product in this short duration. We're especially glad it's not just a "weekend-only" idea and it is something we can continue to make better. This idea is something we hope in the future can be something that truly has a social impact and can actually make the world a safer place.

## What we learned

* Wrld/OSRM API
* Node/Express/MongoDB
-HTTP Requests/Callback functions
-Unity VR sdk
-Pandas/Numpy
* Coordinating team efforts in different parts of the Application

## What's next for SafeWorld

Using real time data to better predictions for real life incidents (protests). In addition, having more global data sets would be a optimal next step to get it working in more cities. This would be expedited by our adaptable framework for data generation and pathing.
## Inspiration

Travel planning is a pain. Even after you find the places you want to visit, you still need to find out when they're open, how far away they are from one another, and work within your budget. With Wander, automatically create an itinerary based on your preferences – just pick where you want to go, and we'll handle the rest for you.

## What it does

Wander shows you the top destinations, events, and eats wherever your travels take you, with your preferences, budget, and transportation in mind. For each day of your trip, Wander creates a schedule for you with a selection of places to visit, lunch, and dinner. It plans around your meals, open hours, event times, and destination proximity to make each day run as smoothly as possible.

## How we built it

We built the backend on Node.js and Express which uses the Foursquare API to find relevant food and travel destinations and schedules the itinerary based on the event type, calculated distances, and open hours. The native iOS client is built in Swift.

## Challenges we ran into

We had a hard time finding all the event data that we wanted in one place. In addition, we found it challenging to sync the information between the backend and the client.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re really proud of our mascot, Little Bloop, and the overall design of our app – we worked hard to make the user experience as smooth as possible. We’re also proud of the way our team worked together (even in the early hours of the morning!), and we really believe that Wander can change the way we travel.

## What we learned

It was surprising to discover that there were so many ways to build off of our original idea for Wander and make it more useful for travelers. After laying the technical foundation for Wander, we kept brainstorming new ways that we could make the itinerary scheduler even more useful, and thinking of more that we could account for – for instance, how open hours of venues could affect the itinerary. We also learned a lot about the importance of design and finding the best user flow in the context of traveling and being mobile.

## What's next for Wander

We would love to continue working on Wander, iterating on the user flow to craft the friendliest end experience while optimizing the algorithms for creating itineraries and generating better destination suggestions.