By Robin Brooks
2017 Data Science for Social Good fellows Brett Bejcek, Mayuree Binjolkar, and Orysya Stus, with UW electrical engineering PhD student Yana Sosnovskaya, competed in and won the ‘Best use of HERE Technologies’ challenge at Seattle’s AngelHack, July 15 -16.
The team developed an SMS-based (text messaging) application called Basic Needs, which utilizes Amazon Lambda and Amazon Lex to communicate with Twilio (a cloud communications platform) to provide users with real-time information about nearest locations, routing strategies and other information.
This application can be used by the homeless population, or other vulnerable populations, to get them connected to the resources they need, while providing cities with a better understanding of how to best allocate resources.
Watch a demo of the team’s winning application on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?